Dr Bernard de Geus has been appointed Director of the Breed4Food consortium. As from 1 June 2013, he will lead the research consortium which is a collaborative effort comprising four animal breeding companies and Wageningen UR. Breed4Food was recently established in response to topsector policy of the Dutch government. Breed4Food aims to develop animal breeding tools and technologies for a more efficient and sustainable manner of securing the food for the growing world population.Dr De Geus is enthusiastic about this new challenge: "The Breed4Food consortium comprises five partners, all successful in the animal breeding world. I believe this consortium will be a trendsetter both at national and international levels and capable of achieving convincing results." De Geus pointed out that the partners are more than willing to perform joint research, this being the only way to seize the many opportunities awaiting those deploying genomic techniques in animal breeding."
Bernard de Geus 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, working from 2000 with the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Fisheries and with the Netherlands Genomics Initiative. From 2007 onwards, Dr De Geus 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), en Cobb Europe (broilers). All partners are worldwide leaders in their field of animal breeding. With the Breed4Food collaboration they wish to further strengthen their positions.
5.14.2013