Twelve founding members, the InnovPlantProtect team and all those who contributed to giving birth to this young CoLab are to be congratulated today: two years ago, the formal constitution of InPP was registered with a notary in Elvas.
On January 24, 2019, in pre-pandemic times, the public deed was signed to establish the InnovPlantProtect - Associação collaborative laboratory in Elvas. Today, a highly qualified team is now complete, work is underway and projects are in progress, marking the second anniversary of the formal establishment of the collaborative laboratory, which has twelve founding partners.
Despite the restrictions imposed on all of us by the Covid-19 crisis, 2021 promises to be auspicious. “The conditions are beginning to be created for the careful and dedicated management to achieve the desired results,” says the mayor of Elvas (CME), an InnovPlantProtect (InPP) member. “Now it's ‘hands on’,” says Nuno Mocinha.
Admitting that “it's been a Herculean task to set up the CoLab”, the chairman of the board of Casa do Arroz has no doubt that “it's been worth it” and that InPP “will be on the map”. “It has everything it takes to succeed,” assures Pedro Monteiro. “For us, the CoLab is our insurance for the future. It's a laboratory that represents a great opportunity for the defense of rice cultivation in Portugal.”
InPP members sign the public deed of incorporation,
on January 24, 2019, at the notary's office in Elvas.
The traditional “family photo”.
The great satisfaction with the quality of the technical staff is shared by CME, CEBAL and Fertiprado - and by InPP's executive director and “man at the helm”, Pedro Fevereiro. “The high level of professionalism, the dedication of all the professionals who make it up and its great organization put this institution on the map of major international organizations in the field of plant protection,” says Liliana Marum, a researcher at CEBAL. “CEBAL, as a founding partner, congratulates InnovPlantProtect on its excellent work and its mission of great importance for the sustainability of national agriculture.”.
“Although it's still in the installation phase, the excellent team already set up by Professor Pedro Fevereiro gives us high hopes for the success of the important projects already underway in the InnovPlantProtect collaborative laboratory,” says Ana Barradas, Fertiprado's R&D director. The company is already working with InPP on the Pythium project, the aim of which is to “identify the pathological organism that causes root rot and find a solution to eliminate it”.
“The CoLab is our insurance for the future.”
Pedro Monteiro, Casa do Arroz
“Fertiprado is very proud to be a founding member of the InnovPlantProtect CoLab and we are very pleased to be celebrating its second anniversary,” concludes Ana Barradas. “After two years, the CoLab has a team of 38 employees, the vast majority of whom are highly educated, highly motivated and competent. It's a team that is expected to make a difference on the agricultural innovation scene and to be able to respond to the challenge of developing biopesticides and services that reduce the impact of pests and diseases on Mediterranean crops,” stresses Pedro Fevereiro.
“Our resilience lies and will lie in the fact that we have created a friendly and interactive working environment, which we want to maintain and expand,” argues InPP's CEO, who bet on this project “because it is a way of participating in the transfer of academic knowledge to real life, on the one hand, and of participating in the construction of solutions for a more productive and sustainable agriculture, on the other.”.
For Pedro Fevereiro, the second anniversary of the establishment of CoLab means above all that the institution has survived the initial installation phase, “which is not over yet, even despite the pandemic situation we are living in”. “It means that what we invested in is still in a position to progress and develop. The preliminary process of setting up was the effort of a team that knew how to put the common interest ahead of individual agendas and that knew how to find a way to make this project viable,” stresses the executive director.
“CoLab has a team of 38 highly motivated and competent employees.”
Pedro Fevereiro, CEO of InPP
In the current context, the biggest challenge “is to keep the team active and working, while we wait for the possibility of having everyone working in the same place and in suitable conditions to develop the projects we already have in hand” - a goal that Pedro Fevereiro hopes to achieve within six months. “Another challenge is to create a modern institution of reference in a territory far from the major centers.” For Nuno Mocinha, InnovPlantProtect represents, in fact, “a qualitative leap in the affirmation of Elvas as a research hub in the national context and a special partnership between academia, companies and local government”.
The main objective now is to “develop national and international projects in the field of crop protection that have the capacity to present solutions as soon as possible, while guaranteeing the CoLab's financial balance,” says Pedro Fevereiro. New bio-based solutions for protecting plants against pests and diseases are “a market that is expected to double in the next five years at international level and which will certainly expand enormously in the European Union in the light of the European Green Deal and the ‘Farm to Fork’ and ‘Biodiversity’ Strategies”, recalls Felisbela Torres de Campos, responsible for Regulatory and Business Sustainability at Syngenta Portugal, an InPP member.
“This collaborative laboratory is on the right track: towards the sustainability of agriculture,” says Felisbela Campos, who considers CoLab “a strategic partnership for Syngenta and also because of the company's strong commitment to R&D in biological solutions for agriculture”. In addition, “InnovPlantProtect positions Portugal as a creator of technologies to solve specific phytosanitary problems in Portuguese agriculture, which will certainly help to reduce the country's dependence on foreign technologies and ensure that the solutions found are more effective from the outset”.
“We welcome this partnership and its potential to accelerate innovation for farmers and nature”.
Felisbela Torres de Campos, Syngenta Portugal
“CEBAL, as a founding partner, congratulates InnovPlantProtect for its excellent work and its mission of great importance for the sustainability of national agriculture,” agrees Liliana Marum, a researcher at the biotechnology center based in Beja.
InPP's founding partners are the National Institute for Agricultural and Veterinary Research, Elvas City Council, the New University of Lisbon, Syngenta Crop Protection, the Alentejo Agricultural and Agri-Food Biotechnology Center, Casa do Arroz, Bayer Crop Science, the University of Évora, Fertiprado, the National Federation of Fruit and Vegetable Producers' Organizations, the National Association of Protein, Oilseed and Cereal Producers, and the National Association of Maize and Sorghum Producers.
By Rita Hasse Ferreira
January 24, 2021
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