Staff
External Personnel
Profile
Naktuinbouw is an independent agency carrying out official inspection and certification Tasks in horticultural seeds and plants, under accreditation and responsibility of the Dutch government. In the obligatory inspection system, Naktuinbouw applies the prescribed European directives and legislation for propagating material for floricultural, arboricultural and vegetable crops. These directives are anchored in Dutch legislation in the form of the Netherlands Seeds and Planting Materials Act. Naktuinbouw is the organisation in the Netherlands authorised to assess varieties of agricultural, floricultural, arboricultural and vegetable crops for distinctness, uniformity and stability for registration purposes and/or granting Plant Breeders’ Rights, both on Dutch an EU level. Naktuinbouw also operates various voluntary quality inspections. These systems complement the inspections or place more stringent requirements than the legislative directives. One of the areas in which this applies is, for instance, testing plant material for plant health, quality, identity and purity. Naktuinbouw also focuses on promoting quality (partially via a system of quality brands) and certain specialisms.
Role in the Project
A key point of the prevention measures is the production and marketing of pathogen-free ( Xf-free) propagating materials. Up to now, since Xf was not present in any of the EU Member States, none of the national certification programs included Xf in the list of the target pathogens to be checked and controlled in the certification programs. Because of the emerging outbreaks and due to the undiscussed role of the propagating plant materials in long distance dispersal of the pathogen, it is important to implement harmonized national certification programs including methodology and procedures ensuring the Xf-free status of the materials produced and moved in EU. The elaboration of such technical protocols, for a large number of specified hosts, represent one of the major impact of XF-ACTORS. To speed up the preparation of these protocols and to promote their adoption and maximize their impacts, XF-ACTORS involves Naktuinbouw and Civi-Italia with long-lasting experience in the qualification of the plant propagating materials and harmonization of certification protocols