Potato World vision PW-ACTUA Room for innovative breeding! Every grower and farmer knows: that the most important things you work with are the forces of nature. It’s fascinating to see how much progress has been made in recent years in the area of breeding. By using state-of-the-art technology, this can be done much faster and with a more targeted approach than ever before. This is, of course, necessary because we need to feed more mouths and at the same time decrease the environmental impact. For example, new crops could be made more tolerant to pests and diseases or could contain higher nutritional value. With cisgenesis, for example, we could control Phytophthora more successfully and apply up to 80 percent less crop protection chemicals. And yet, left-wing parties in the European Parliament are dead against it, because they think that genetic modification will get in via the back door. Louise Fresco, Chairperson of Wageningen University said the following on this: ‘Broadly stating that you are for or against genetic modification is just as much nonsense as saying that you are for or against motor cars or for or against antibiotics.’ The reason is that a crop does not automatically become genetically-engineered like those that were created twenty years ago. Moreover, the point is how we use new plant species. I saw with my own eyes, during a traineeship in Argentina, that glyphosate-resistant soya beans were planted in enormous quantities and sprayed with glyphosate. It goes without saying that, not much later, they also had resistant weeds. This was waiting to happen, this is what nature does. The thing is to use new, promising applications wisely. As long as there has been crop farming, we’ve been trying to improve agricultural production, especially in the Netherlands. Our breeding sector is one of the most flourishing in the world, and that’s how it should stay. Which is why I’ve vigorously defended the breeders’ exemption in the European Parliament, and I received active support in the end. The following challenge now faces us: there are currently eight new breeding techniques which are under review as either being GMOs or, as far as the technique is concerned, as being normal breeding. Cisgenesis is one of them. I will do my utmost to give innovation a chance and keep Europe and the Netherlands flourishing! ● Jan Huitema Member of the European Parliament for the VVD (Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy) Market value of HZPC passes the 100 million euros At the recently held stock trading day, the HZPC Holland certificate price was set at €136.90. The number of traded certificates was 4,765. According to CEO Gerard Backx, the trading company has now issued a total of 783,725 certificates. ‘With the current price, the market value has now passed 100 million euros for the first time.’ At the recently held stock trading day, the HZPC Holland certificate price was set at E 136.90. The price of HZPC has again risen by the 10 percent maximum, top man Backx says in a reaction. Since May 2010, the certificate price has risen twelve times by the 10 percent maximum and once by an ample 9 percent. HZPC traded its first certificates in the 1999/2000 financial year at a price of e 24. The market value was then almost 19 million euros. HZPC organises a certificate trading day twice in a financial year, in May and in November for its affiliated breeders, seed potato growers and for the HZPC staff in countries where the company is active. For the buying and selling of certificates, HZPC worked for the first time with a new on-line platform. This on-line system offers each certificate holder insight into their own position. ‘Since working together with a new external stock holder, HZPC offers its national and international certificate holders a userfriendly, always-available online portal that fits our current world-wide organisation extremely well’, Backx told us. ● Potato World 2016 • number 3 11 Pagina 10

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