dr. RM (Rene) Klein Lankhorst
Program Developer Plant Sciences GroupI work for the board of directors of the Plant Sciences Group as Program Developer with the specific aim of setting-up and establishing large national- and international research cooperation in the field of global food and nutrition security, climate change mitigation and the transition towards a bioeconomy. Central theme in this is increasing plant photosynthesis, which has the potential of doubling global crop production by 2050.
Together with national and international colleagues, I have established the Photosynthesis 2.0 Consortium (https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Themes/From-hunger-to-food-security/photosynthesis/Consortium.htm) which aims to execute a large, pan-European research programme with the ultimate goal to develop novel, high yielding crop varieties. In order to establish how such a program exactly should be organized and executed, currently I am coordinating the CropBooster-P Project (https://www.cropbooster-p.eu/) . In this project, we are developing a Roadmap for the European Commission to "Future-proof our Plants"
On the national level, I am involved in establishing the Dutch national plant-phenotyping facility NPEC (https://www.npec.nl/) which, amongst others, will harbour state-of-the-art equipment to measure plant photosynthesis both indoors (greenhouse, climate rooms) as in the open field.