In the media EU Commissioner Serafin sees sensible use of agrifood innovation budgets allocated at ILVO

19/06/2025

During his visit to ILVO on June 12, 2025, EU Commissioner Piotr Serafin was able to observe first-hand how ILVO is making excellent use of European funds for innovation to provide services to companies in the agri-food sector. Serafin's visit to ILVO is part of a European listening tour of the EU Commissioner in charge of Budget, Anti-Fraud and Public Administration. With a view to drawing up the next European budget, EU Commissioner Serafin is going on the road to listen and see how European funds for innovation are being used.

ILVO receives those European funds by subscribing to calls for research projects through the Horizon Europe or ERDF programs, among others. In doing so, ILVO achieved a 47% success rate in 2024, which is exceptionally high.

ILVO deploys these resources for the development of targeted test infrastructure and tailored services to companies active in the agrifood sector. In this way, they can strengthen their competitiveness.

ILVO offers two services:

Agrifood Test and Experiment Facility (TEF) AgrifoodTEF which provides research services and support in precision agriculture, the use of data and robotics in the agrifood sector.

  • the high-technology trial field HYDRAS which is hyper-equipped both above and below ground to simulate drought and measure its effects on plants. This is being used in the area of plant breeding and developing new, drought-tolerant crops and varieties in light of climate change.
Both service platforms were presented through brief demos. 3 companies testified about their experiences and their applications within the company.

For HYDRAS, this is United Beet Seeds, a beet seed firm from Tienen.

For AgrifoodTEF, that is Agriflight | Agriculture drone solutions which is the first in Belgium to offer drone flights in "contract work" as well as Vanhoucke Machine Engineering (link) of Moorslede, which has developed an automated hoeing machine for.

In his presentation to EU Commissioner Serafin, Administrator General Joris Relaes presented the international nature of ILVO and the importance the European budgets have for the ILVO organization.


At the conclusion of his visit, EU Commissioner recorded this reaction:

The press was also keenly interested. This brought

  • VRT NWS l De Markt in the Saturday, June 14, 2025 episode (a report by VRT journalist Tess De Keersgieter)
  • the Vlaams Infocentrum voor Land- en Tuinbouw VILT on June 12, 2025 (a report by Ruben Dekeyser)
  • the agricultural trade journal Landbouwleven from Thursday, June 19 (a report by Filip Vanderlinden)
  • the June 26 agricultural trade journal Le Sillion belge
  • Boer & Tuinder, The weekly membership magazine of Boerenbond by journalist Ivan De Clercq
  • PlattelandsTV in the program PlattelandsTV Weekend from June 13-15, 2025
  • PlattelandsTV Special - full broadcast dedicated to the visit of EU Commissioner Serafin, from 6 juli 2025
  • Het Laatste Nieuws, Merelbeke-Melle region, on June 12, 2025 (Didier Verbaere)