Birte Boelt chairman of new industrial collaboration committee

AGRO has Senior Researcher Birte Boelt from CROP as chairman of its newly established industrial collaboration committee. She is a woman with experience. For the past 20 years Birte Boelt has collaborated with the seed sector and related businesses. Most of the funding for the projects that she is involved in comes from the seed sector.

Birte Boelt knows what is needed to create and maintain good collaboration with a company. The keywords are networking, involvement and understanding each other’s expectations.

- We spar with the companies about the whole process, i.e. which projects to initiate, and how to carry them out and communicate about them. We hold meetings during the summer at which time the companies visit us and view the trials, and again during the winter, when we present the preliminary research results. This means the companies can use the results already the first year, Birte Boelt explains.

Apart from the quick transfer of scientific knowledge to real life it is also important for the companies that the scientists speak the same lingo as they do, understand their world and develop a good network with key players.

- In addition, it is important that they view our research trials. It is very important for industrial collaboration that the companies can see that we carry out studies under comparable conditions to the ones they have in their world. That makes them feel that they are benefiting from collaboration with us. It is also important to be aware of their workflow and know which persons to contact, Birte Boelt points out. She has built up an extensive network in the course of the many years that she has collaborated with the industry.

Read the article about AGRO’s new industrial collaboration committee here.