With effect from 1 June 2013, Dr de Geus is leading the research consortium, which is a collaborative effort comprising four animal breeding companies and Wageningen UR. Breed4Food was recently established in response to the Dutch government's top sector policy. Breed4Food aims to develop animal breeding tools and technologies that provide food security for the world's growing population in a more sustainable and efficient manner.
Dr de Geus is enthusiastic about this new challenge. He said: “The Breed4Food consortium comprises five partners, all successful in the animal breeding world. I believe this consortium will be a national and international trendsetter that achieves convincing results.”
Dr de Geus emphasised that the partners are more than willing to perform joint research, as this is the only way to capitalise on the many opportunities the use of genomic techniques in animal breeding offers.”
Bernard de Geus (53) studied Molecular Biology and Genetics at Utrecht University and obtained a PhD at Leiden University. After a research career, he held several positions in research management. In 2000, he started working for the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries and with the Netherlands Genomics Initiative. From 2007 onwards, he was Director of the public-private consortium in plant breeding 'Technological Top Institute Green Genetics'.
Breed4Food is the consortium established by the Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre of Wageningen UR and the four Netherlands-based international animal breeding companies CRV (cattle), Hendrix Genetics (turkeys, layers, pigs, aquaculture and traditional poultry), Topigs (pigs) and Cobb Europe (broilers). All of the partners are global leaders in their field of animal breeding and with the Breed4Food collaboration they want to further strengthen their respective positions.
