BASF

With its Nunhems® brand, BASF is one of the world’s largest vegetable seed companies. Offering the professional horticulture and vegetable value chain 1,200 vegetable varieties in 24 crops, as well as unrivalled specialist advice. With over 2,000 employees, we’re present in every major vegetable producing market worldwide. Lead by Dr Henk Verbakel, they will lead activities on field site growing and MoVaPs translation to elite crop breeding lines. One of the ‘most have’ traits in plant breeding is “yield”. Photosynthesis efficiency is thus automatically a trait that has been selected for. This means that the germplasm of the company is required to determine the extra value of the QTLs and other findings of this project. Validation of identified QTLs in different genetic backgrounds, phenotyping in different environments under production conditions is required to estimate the value of the discoveries for commercial use. They will also help develop the road map and engage in stakeholder activities.