The Dutch Culture Group for Roses and Rose Rootstock’s visit to ILVO highlights the importance of top notch horticultural research

Belgian research institute ILVO hosted a visit by the Dutch Culture Group for Roses and Rose Rootstocks on Friday 13 September, to take the 30 rose professionals from the Netherlands behind the scenes of ongoing research in ornamental crops.

ILVO is a research institute of the Flemish government employing over 750 people. It operates across several locations in Flanders.

The Dutch delegation was given a tour of ILVO’s Plant Department which includes in-house breeding programmes for various ornamental crops such as garden roses.

More recently, a number of ILVO-bred garden roses has participated in the Culture Group’s Excellence Roses trials. Excellence Roses is an initiative of the Dutch Culture Group for Roses and Rootstocks, with its secretariat running under the Dutch industry body Anthos. Having an Excellence Roses certification is a mark of quality. At the B2B level, Excellence Rose Certification is an important consideration when choosing a supplier, and the end-consumer ultimately enjoys the benefits of growing healthy and reliable rose blooms.

Leen  Leus, senior scientist at ILVO,  discussed the different research projects studying circular cultivation by reusing potting soil and artificial intelligence (AI) for optimal crop management.

ILVO takes pride of using the latest techniques in plant breeding. In selecting what to breed, grower member of the BEST-select cooperative have an important say.

The party also toured ILVO’s greenhouses, lab and trial grounds. The green professionals from the Netherlands took keen interest in the Hydras-system designed to monitor the drought response of the entire plant from leaf to root.

More than 8,000m² of experimental fields are fitted with 6 mobile rainout shelters, a network of almost 1,400 electrodes and drones with advanced sensors. Groundbreaking is not only the large scale of this field lab but also the electrical network that maps soil moisture levels and water uptake by plant roots. ILVO is the first in the world to make this combination of technologies on this scale. It is open access for companies and knowledge institutions and will serve to accelerate the development of drought-tolerant crops in Europe. Ultimately, Hydras’ aim is to speed up the development of drought tolerant crops.

“Now that the botanical garden in Meise has become the third judging location for Excellence Roses in Flanders, our group is operating increasingly internationally. Our visit to ILVO, where we haven been warmly welcomed, was further proof of this,”said the Group’s interim chairman Hans van Hage. ‘The lines between breeding, cultivation and research have increasingly become  blurred in recent years and are now intrinsically linked toe ach other. We were impressed by the research and results achieved by ILVO and look forward to further knowledge exchange over the coming years.”