The biggest breakthrough in horticulture of the past year? Peter Korsten, CEO of the Botany Group, doesn't have to think about it for long. 'In autonomous cultivation, computers outperformed growers for the first time.'

Computers, machines, artificial networks that achieve higher quality than growers. And this is just the beginning. 'The last year has really made a difference,' says Peter Korsten (1971) at Villa Flora on Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo, where he is one of the driving forces.

He has no fewer than six companies in his portfolio. All active in product development in the agro sector: Botany (tests and develops new cultivation methods), Exploras (open cultivation), Brightbox (expertise center for daylight-free multilayer cultivation), Asperico (knowledge and development partner for hard and stone fruit), Innexo (research into molecular farming), Innoveins (plant, technology, business development and innovations) and Innoveins Seed Solutions (research into seed technology). In short, they are engaged in research & development in the horticultural sector. Peter Korsten himself is considered a specialist in the field of plant and high-tech.

Just to be sure: is that good news that cultivation is being taken over by computers? For this sector it is,' says Peter Korsten. 'In the Netherlands and Western Europe we are having trouble getting people enthusiastic about the cultivation and production of vegetable crops. That problem is getting bigger and bigger. It's not just about the hands, but also the technology. The aging population has been a problem for years. The average age of the grower with green fingers is quite high; the younger generation is looking for automation. Young people are becoming enthusiastic about our profession again'.

Korsten grew up as the son of a tomato grower in Panningen. I really do see a big gap between my generation and those that followed. We are the last generation of growers who grew up working on a horticultural company. The companies have become much larger and you can see that the distance to the grower's family is increasing. The new generation no longer has a background in the sector. They are particularly enthusiastic about producing safe food in combination with biology, technology and automation. I think that vertical farming (growing in layers without soil) as a combination of technology and plants appeals to young people.

That these developments would go so fast didn't really come as a surprise. At the end of the nineties it was predicted that a medium-sized farm like that of my parents with 1.2 hectares would not survive. It had to be increased to ten, fifteen hectares. Then you need other qualities, you also need to be a manager. My generation already ran up against the so-called charm of working six days a week from five in the morning until ten at night. My father, now retired, did everything himself, he went into the field from dawn to dusk. You can't manage with that now.'

Korsten is concerned with everything that can affect a plant. He has never doubted the future of the sector. After all, the demand for fresh food is only growing. But with the advent of technology he did have some explaining to do. 'The best example is vertical farming. We started growing plants without daylight in boxes about ten years ago. When we built the Brightbox here at Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo in 2015, there was a trend towards organic products. And this was a high-tech product. There was quite some resistance from the organic corner: it's not natural, there's no sand, you can't see clogs. When we just started, a lot of people came by, we also really wanted to show what we were doing, so we explained it a lot.'

People thought it was unusual. Korsten sketched the picture: only plants that come out of the ground can be healthy. By now he knows better. 'It's not about whether it's organic or not, it's about whether the food is safe and clean, not processed with pesticides, but protected with products of natural origin. Young families want fresh, safe and healthy food. We can make the plant healthier with our innovations and because young people have grown up more with technology we don't have to explain it to them. The fact that there are no pesticides on it is now more important than the method of cultivation you use.'

Sure, even for Peter Korsten himself, food from the factory has an aftertaste. He remembers that in his youth lush nature was everywhere. There were plants everywhere, even inside the house, there were many forests, it smelled of green everywhere, nature stimulated your senses. That has completely disappeared, gardens are made of stone and artificial grass, in the cities the trees have been cut down: two hundred years old no problem. But the old chimney of the factory had to stay...'

He has now made it his mission to bring back that feeling of freshness. 'I want to bring back that green life. Fresh food is part of that. Fresh is only one day old, is healthy and it should be available everywhere in the whole world. It's a choice: we can make very healthy food but you can also make food that contains nothing more than water and a little cellulose. But I can also make lettuce that is healthy and grow roses that do smell. There is renewed interest in taste and smell, he notes. For young people good food is an experience again.

Is this the story of the Wasserbombe back to the tomato? (In Germany, the Dutch tomato was once referred to as a Wasserbombe, a water bomb, ed.) Peter Korsten: 'It's precisely thanks to that inflated story about the Wasserbombe that we now have an enormous variety of tomatoes. You can still buy tomatoes for fifty cents a kilo, but also the delicious honey tomatoes. Now we want to make the tomato even healthier. For the elderly, for young children, other flavors, other colors. There is still a lot to develop in terms of taste, appearance, nutritional value and health. When is a tomato healthy? What makes a tomato healthier? Does it have to contain more vitamins? Antioxidants? Certain oils? It doesn't depend on the tomato but on the diet. You can provide a tomato with extra vitamins but does the body absorb them? That still requires research.'

That sounds like customization. So what about the rest of the world? 'Here we don't need to help anyone with vegetables anymore, but we do in the rest of the world. That's where you can make the quickest steps. In countries where you cannot get water, it is better to build a factory in which plants grow. You have a lot of sunshine so you can easily generate electricity and grow vegetables. You will see in the future that we will grow more and more vegetables indoors for food safety reasons.' Ultimate goal: 'Everyone should have fair and tasty food,' says the CEO of the Botany companies.

Corsten's choice of Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo is a logical one: "We are here because we come from the region and we will stay here because the developers and the ideas come from here. On this campus, innovation takes place in daily practice. There are people here who want to do things better or differently.'

Which doesn't take away from the fact that he still lacks sufficient mass. 'Actually, we need more innovative parties. Companies that want to take up innovation together with others, start-ups, innovative students and companies. You have good new growth here, but because the environment here is still very introverted, you see that the real innovators choose the easy way, so for the very large companies where they can grow more easily. But there is a lot of talent here. The HAS still has quite an appeal.'

For horticulture, too, the future is in artificial intelligence. 'There you see big breakthroughs in the field of cultivation, but also in a natural way of growing. With seed coating development we are very much in the business of making products plastic-free. And we do a lot in the area of crop health. You can now slowly see the first breakthroughs there, products of natural origin that can do the same as chemical products.'

Llamas

However specific, he mentions mildew control using a vaccine that comes from a llama. A llama itself makes certain antibodies against diseases. These can be extracted from the milk of a llama and introduced into products to combat mildew on tomatoes. Not all attempts have been equally successful. It takes time. Producing new plants also takes at least fifteen years. We have now reached the point where we can compete with chemistry. We have been around for twenty years and are only now getting somewhere. But we still have hundreds if not thousands of chemical products to replace. That means that step by step we can move away from products of non-natural origin. By 2050 we might be able to say that we can feed the world in a circular way for the next five hundred years.'

Support

Peter Korsten firmly believes that Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo can play a major role in this. The best thing about the campus is the interaction between the university, students and businesses. Innovation is about meeting each other, understanding what the need is and what the possibilities are. That's different from a high-tech campus where everyone is busy with technology and no one knows why you have to water a tomato plant. Here you see that mix. Nine out of ten innovations come by chance. You have to organize it, but coincidence always plays a role. A student here at the table who enthusiastically talks about what he does can give me the idea, "hey, if he can do that, maybe he can solve my problem too. This is something that makes my heart beat faster. With an existing company, you continue an existing line, here you can think out of the box. I don't create the real changes at the office in Horst-Meterik. And there is a lot of support here: provinces, municipalities, companies, they all see the importance of it. But we have to show it more. That's a task. We must have a greenhouse where we can show that we are working innovatively with food and plants. And we will have one. What you see, you experience.'