40 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM T he numbers of young people studying plant breeding and related studies has drastically gone down over the past four decades. Public spending in this field of education has been on a steady decline since the mid-seventies. And while the plant breeding industry keeps growing, it is getting harder and harder to fill vacancies in this sector. It is therefore heart-warm- ing to see that from time to time new ini- tiatives surface that are trying the fill the gap. emPLANT is such a new initiative and European Seed sat down with Sebastian Rieder, Associate Director at LaSalle Beauvais, France. EUROPEAN SEED (ES): SEBASTIAN, HOW DID EMPLANT COME TO LIFE? IN OTHER WORDS, WHAT WERE THE MOTIVATIONS TO START THIS CONSORTIUM? SEBASTIAN RIEDER (SR): emPLANT has been the fruit of many years of preparatory work. It all began with discussing the design of an MSc in plant breeding at UniLaSalle, France in 2013 in close collaboration with part- ner companies so as to ensure the pro- gramme suited the needs of the seed industry. It was surprising to see that on the one hand, Europe is the world’s lead- ing exporter of seeds and has excellent universities and research centres in the field of plant breeding. On the other hand, plant breeding companies are struggling to find suitable candidates with solid com- petences in breeding: A MASTER TO SUCSEED THE ERASMUS MUNDUS MASTER PROGRAMME IN PLANT BREEDING – EMPLANT. BY: MARCEL BRUINS WHY IT MATTERS Numbers of plant breeding students are on a decline, and seed companies have great trouble filling plant breeding vacancies. The possibilities for young people to study plant breeding have been decreasing, but thanks to new initiatives there is now light at the end of the tunnel. emPLANT is one of those new initiatives. years. But while there is a growing need to develop and implement techniques based on new developments in biology, practical experience remains a key skill necessary to bring new and better adapted plant varieties to market. The huge potential offered by research, education and train- ing in new areas of plant biology, needs to be balanced by the acquisition of skills in such fundamental areas as plant physiol- ogy, breeding, cytology and biochemistry.” From: ‘Educating and Training the next Generation - An Education Action Plan to 2020’, The European Technology Platform (ETP) “Plants for the Future”, 2016. The main objective of the MSc at UniLaSalle has therefore been to train project leaders to design and manage breeding projects with skills in tradi- tional breeding techniques and biotech- nologies which correspond to the main need expressed by the seed industry. For the biotechnology part, a partnership was set up with Ghent University in Belgium, where the second year of UniLaSalle’s MSc has been taking place. In 2015 UniLaSalle joined forces with European top-universities Ghent University, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Polytechnic University Valencia (UPV), Spain and Ege University (EgeU) in Turkey within the framework of an Erasmus + Strategic Partnership to create the European Plant Breeding College (EPBC) (www.epbc.eu). This two-year, 245K€ project was a lab to further improve the MSc programmes in plant breeding of the participating uni- versities and increase the employability of their students. EPBC helped testing new pedagogical tools (case studies), integrated new learning and teaching tools (online courses, webinars), set up an internship network among their members to provide their students with international practical experiences, engaged a dialogue with the seed industry on Human Resources Policy, organised intensive study programmes and master thesis mobilities to provide their students with knowledge about other work- ing methods, equipment, different climatic conditions and intercultural experience. For the participating universities, who are all specialised in different fields emPLANT is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union “Agricultural supply companies increasingly depend on a multi-skilled and highly trained workforce, and have a clear need for more plant scientists qualified to Masters or PhD level in the coming 5-10 Ege University students in Turkey take part in one of five Intensive Study Programmes that have taken place in the five EPBC Partners Universities.