Europatat Congress 2024: Presentation of ADAPT project’s results

On Friday, 24 May, in the context of the Europatat Congress 2024, researchers from the EU-funded project titled Accelerated Development of multiple-stress tolerAnt PoTato (ADAPT) presented the main project results that have been achieved after four years of intensive work.

With more than 100 participants from more than 10 countries around Europe, the session attracted high interest from potato breeders and other value chain professionals who are worried about the consequences of climate change. Most of the audience agreed that climate change is an issue and this made the presentation of the project results interesting.

The session was moderated by Romans Vorss, Technical Affairs Director at Europatat:

• Markus Teige, Senior Lecturer at the University of Vienna, and Rashmi Sasidharan, Professor at Utrecht University showcased the main scientific results of the project, which aims to identify new breeding targets and matching potato varieties to specific extreme environmental conditions of the future.
• Guus Heselmans, manager R&D Meijer Potato presented the practical results from a point of view of a potato breeder and encouraged other breeders to join projects like ADAPT.
• Lastly, a panel discussion including also the participation of Christian Bachem, Wageningen Research and Gisela Quaglia, DG AGRI, EU Commission, highlighted that there is a future for project findings and that the potato breeding sector should take advantage of ADAPT’s project results.

Finally, all the panellists highlighted the value of close cooperation and multi-actor approach in EU research projects.

More ADAPT results will be published soon as the project is coming to an end this summer. Visit ADAPT’s website for more details.