PlantHUB: Strengthening partnerships between academia and industry

DSV is currently participating in an innovative new research programme from the European Union aimed at fostering scientific partnerships between academia and industry. This programme, entitled PlantHUB - Boosting technology transfer and responsible research and innovation in plant sciences, is funded from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme and gives ten doctoral students the opportunity to organize their research projects evenly between an academic and industrial partner. This programme, initiated by the Zurich-Basel Plant Science Centre (PSC), a competence centre that links and supports the plant science research community of the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich and the University of Basel, in Switzerland, will utilise the already existing PhD programme ‘Plant Science’ available at the PSC, which encompasses a wide range of plant breeding and production related education activities.. With the initiative of the PSC, academic partners were identified within Switzerland and industrial partners sourced from Europe, with companies from Switzerland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany.

 

Apart from the scientific research, these projects will also focus on the implementation of participatory research and innovation actions, stakeholder and public engagement and the identification of relevant bioethical considerations.

 

Two of the PlantHUB doctoral students have already started their research with DSV in collaboration with the Molecular Plant Breeding group at the ETH-Zurich. Based at the research stations in Ven-Zelderheide and Poel, both projects are focussing on the development of novel molecular breeding techniques to extend the existing methods for breeding in ryegrass with molecular tools and based on this, a more efficient selection of breeding material.

 

 

There are many shared benefits of having doctoral students follow a project through an academic research idea to practical applications within a plant breeding company. The programme offers excellent opportunities for ETH-Zurich to collaborate with DSV, i.e. accessing breeding material, large-scale field trials and phenotypic data. Material and data generated at DSV will find its way to the high-end laboratory equipment and bioinformatics expertise of the ETH-Zurich. The PhD students benefit strongly from being involved in both academically rigorous and practically focussed research approaches. Moreover, DSV will benefit by gaining access to the leading academic minds in molecular plant breeding, cutting-edge equipment and technology as well as the presence of talented and motivated students within the ongoing breeding programmes.

 

Ideally, this style of collaboration will lead to closer ties between academia and industry, allowing knowledge sharing to occur that will ensure that academic research is practically focussed and that DSV will stay up to date with scientific innovation. Furthermore DSV promotes with this engagement the education of young scientists, offering them the unique opportunity to be involved in practical plant breeding during their research.

 

This programme receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 722338 – PlantHUB.

 

For more information about the PlantHUB programme visit: https://www.plantsciences.uzh.ch/en/research/fellowships/PlantHUB.html