Publication ILVO's Annual Report 2021

2021 was another year of Covid-19 but that did not prevent us from continuing our activities to the maximum and starting up a lot of new projects. The European Union is an increasingly important funder in this respect. But also in the framework of the Flemish Relaunch policy, we were able to start up a number of exciting projects on, among other things, drought resistance and protein diversification. As far as the latter is concerned, ILVO has embarked on research into the processing of microbial fermentation products in close partnership with Bio Base Plant Europe.

The annual report 2021 presents a fascinating palette of research completed and started in the past year, too many to mention here. Nevertheless, I would like to dwell for a moment on the fact that ILVO, in a beautiful collaboration with VIB, launched its first startup Protealis. The ambitions are great to bring soy varieties on the market in the short term that are adapted to our climate conditions and should reduce the European dependence on imported soy.

In recent years ILVO has been very successful in attracting new projects. It is crucial that the right people are found to carry out these projects, which is not always evident in a very tight labor market. In 2021, 67 vacancies were published and 82 new staff members joined us.

We are also looking forward to 2022. ILVO will then be celebrating its 90th anniversary. We want to celebrate this with the general public on Agriculture Day on 18 September. In addition, the commissioning by our colleagues in Ostend of the beautiful new research building 'InnovOcean' will certainly be recorded as a real milestone in ILVO history.

Enjoy your reading!