RE SEARCH Wageningen Potato Centre (WPC) has together for fiv or five years now. e With thirty affiliated top businesses, prominent institutes and organisations from at home and abroad, Wageningen Potato Centre (WPC) is a straight success formula. Having started five years ago without any subsidy, WPC will proudly celebrate its fifth anniversary soon. The knowledge and networking institute is focused on natural growth. A no-nonsense institute led by Marcel Tramper (MT), Marieke Ampt (MA) and Thie-Arend Brouwer (TB). In an interview, they openly and enthusiastically tell us about five years of exchanging knowledge between science and practice, and all the things still to come. Where did you get the idea to start a knowledge resource centre for potatoes? Marcel Tramper: ‘The idea to start a potato knowledge centre arose about seven years ago during one of the Potato Demonstration Days. There are usually a lot of customers at such gatherings. There’s hardly any time to meet exhibitors from the industry branch. This means that you often miss the depth, is the opinion of some participants. Whether you work in engineering, breeding or chemistry, you also want to hear about developments in other disciplines. You all work in the same sector, don’t you? Some of the exhibitors at the show came up with the idea of starting a potato knowledge centre. We very quickly came to the conclusion that a direct link to Wageningen UR would be needed, which led us to the name Wageningen Potato Centre. After some groundwork, it turned out that the University already had a Wageningen Potato Centre. This was set up by Anton Haverkort together with some other University staff. He told us that the idea had not been developed so far. Fortunately, we found him prepared 4 Potato World 2015 • number 3 Pagina 3
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