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Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ has joined FoodBest, an interdisciplinary collaboration between the most innovative European knowledge institutions and companies. FoodBest’s goal is to become an international Knowledge and Innovation Community (KIC) for research into sustainable methods for developing healthy and appealing food products for the world’s growing population. This is exactly what the university-wide focus area Future Food Utrecht hopes to contribute to. Prof. Rens Voesenek (Biology), one of the leaders of Future Food Utrecht, has been appointed to the regional board for the Benelux region.

European subsidy

KIC is a European programme to encourage innovation, research and education in order to deal with the major social challenges that Europe faces today and in the future. In 2016, FoodBest will submit a KIC application in the field of Food & Health, Food Safety and Sustainability to the European Institute for Innovation & Technology (EIT). The EIT will grant a subsidy to the best proposal in the area of ‘Food4Future’. In addition to the subsidy of approximately 50 million Euros per year, the partner organisations will contribute another 150 million Euros per year to fund the research.

Future Food Utrecht and the other partners in the consortium consider the subsidy as a stimulus to look for more cooperation with the business community. FoodBest wants to involve the best partners in Europe in order to reinforce the consortium and the collaboration, and to increase the chance of obtaining the subsidy.

Regional board

The consortium consists of six regions: Denmark/Sweden, France, Spain, Italy, Great Britain/Ireland and the Benelux. Wageningen ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ acts as the Secretary for the Benelux region within the consortium. The Benelux region currently consists of the universities of Wageningen and Utrecht, as well as the ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ of Maastricht, Groningen and Ghent, and TNO. The participating industrial partners in the Benelux will probably be Cargill, Philips, FrieslandCampina and Unilever.

Future Food Utrecht

Future Food Utrecht works to find fundamental new solutions for a sustainable and healthy food supply that is acceptable and accessible to the world population. In Future Food Utrecht, researchers from 25 research groups at all seven faculties of Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ and UMC Utrecht work together. These include botanists, pharmaceutical scientists, social scientists, social geographers, economists, and medical and veterinary researchers. Much of the research involves cooperation with businesses and other research institutions.