回国前,瓦大记者就我的博士论文采访的报道

 http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Research-Institutes/plant-research-international/show/Cooperation-explains-success-of-Dutch-vegetable-seed-industry.htm

 Cooperation Explains the Success of Dutch Vegetable Seed Industry

September 24, 2013  By Plant Research International, Plant Breeding

 

Lots of tomato, cucumber and pepper seeds fly abroad from Schiphol every year and the Netherlands is the world’s largest exporter of vegetable seeds. Most of the ten largest vegetable seed companies in the world have their headquarters and their R&D activities here. According to the Chinese business expert Zhen Liu, this Dutch success story can be attributed to the unique fact that competing Dutch seed companies also cooperate with each other. Another factor is that Wageningen UR’s Plant Sciences currently has the largest international network of plant institutes in the world.

Zhen Liu, now a consultant in Beijing, defended her PhD thesis at Wageningen UR on 26 August. To identify the driving forces behind the success of Dutch and Chinese seed companies, she carried out literature studies, sent out questionnaires and interviewed directors of companies and institutes. This allowed her to ascertain why the Dutch seed industry has been so successful, and what China needs to do in order to make its own more innovative.

“It’s difficult to create cooperative structures in China,” she tells. “The government still organises everything there. Here in the Netherlands the seed companies organise themselves.” She cites the example of the Wageningen biotechnology company Keygene, which now employs 130 workers. This was set up twenty years ago by a number of Dutch family companies, including Enza Zaden and Rijk Zwaan. While each partner would find it prohibitively expensive to invest in new biotechnology on their own, as stakeholders they can share costs and gain access to the most advanced technologies.

According to Liu, another noteworthy phenomenon is the programme run by the Centre for BioSystems Genomic (CBSG). This combines funding from the government, Wageningen UR and vegetable seed and seedling companies for molecular-genetic research. The content is also determined jointly.

Such cooperation is still seen as impossible in China. When Liu wrote a story about Keygene in a Chinese journal last year, she received several emails and phone calls. “Directors of seed companies were really shocked,” she says. “They asked me: how is this possible? How can competitors set up a company together?”

China has a long history of good vegetable seed. The first Chinese agriculture handbook, Qi Min Yao Shu, described the need for seed improvement as far back as two and a half thousand years ago. China also has the world’s largest cultivated area used for vegetables. But the sector is mostly fragmented at present. Most seed companies are small and only grow and sell seed. Zhen Liu concluded that, out of the 8700 seed companies registered in 2010, only 112 were actually involved in vegetable breeding and employed more than ten people. Moreover, some of the most important of these firms were branches of Dutch companies.

“Chinese vegetable seed companies still invest very little in biotechnology,” Liu notes. “Last month I spoke with the director of the largest cucumber seed company in China and he asked: ‘why should I do that? Isn’t investment the government’s job?’”

Liu also charted the network of research institutes by investigating the Chinese and foreign authors and citations of articles in the plant sciences. She found that, of all the plant institutes, Plant Sciences Wageningen had the most foreign connections between 2009 and 2011, followed by Wisconsin University (US), INRA (France) and Cornell University (US). According to Liu, this huge international network is another factor that promotes innovation in the Dutch vegetable seed sector.

Cooperation and specialisation are good for innovation, she concludes. “There are hundreds of institutes working on improving tomatoes right now in China. Each region has one, but they compete for the same public funds. And the only way to get starting material or information is to be very good friends with your colleague. More specialisation can change this: institutes can focus on specific tomatoes or vegetables.”

Zhen Liu now works as a business developer at Wageningen UR’s China office in Beijing. She also has a private consulting company, PraxitheaBridge. When asked whether Dutch seed companies can also learn something from China she pauses for a moment and thinks of something. Only weeks after she had written her article on Keygene in the Chinese journal one of China's vegetable seed companies made an appointment for a visit and signed a contract with Keygene. “The Chinese are very open to innovation and can also make decisions quickly. In the Netherlands, there are always more meetings about everything.”