ARE YOU UP FOR A CHALLENGE?
How can new technologies solve real farming challenges: Come shape the future of the seed industry with us
About the challenge:
Initiated by leading players in the seed industry in the Netherlands and Denmark: Rijk Zwaan, Enza Zaden, Syngenta, Jensen Seeds, Vikima Seed, KWS Vegetables, and BASF Nunhems, this event brings together companies, knowledge institutions, and technology providers to develop solutions that matter.
We invite you to take part in the upcoming Open Innovation Challenge, a call to shape a more sustainable future for global seed production.
The Open Innovation Challenge gives you the opportunity to advance your ideas alongside leading players in the seed industry. Build a strong international network, share knowledge, and increase your visibility within a growing community of innovators. We need your help with these challenges:
Challenge Fertilization: Optimizing nitrogen usage through new technologies and measures while protecting the environment.
Challenge Herbicide Free Weed Control:
Exploring affordable, eco-friendly solutions to control weeds in mature crops.
Challenge Healthy Soil:
Maintaining yield, while exploring new agricultural practices (e.g. regenerative farming)
Further information on each individual can be found bellow.
The individual cases:
Case Living lab Fertilization:
The living lab Fertilization focuses on gaining insights to understand the behaviour of nitrogen (N) in the soil. By studying how nitrogen moves and transforms, we aim to build a solid knowledge base that explains where and how losses occur.
Building on these insights, the Living Lab seeks to develop practical and effective solutions that can be adopted by growers in real-world farming. The ultimate goal is to establish fertilizer guidelines that minimize nitrogen leakage while maintaining optimal nitrogen uptake by crops, ensuring efficient resource use and reducing environmental impact. In this discussion, we want to explore technologies and approaches that can make fertilization more precise and find ways to ensure these practices are effective for widely use.
The questions we have:
1. How can we measure and monitor nitrogen levels in soil, in different depths and in real-time, while being: accessible, affordable, scalable and easily applicable.
2. What innovative techniques, technologies and applications can improve nitrogen availability and reduce leakage?
Case Living lab Herbicide-Free Weed Control:
The Living Lab Herbicide-Free Weed Control tackles the challenge of managing weeds sustainably without chemical herbicides. Farmers face high machinery costs, limited scalable technologies, and challenges adapting to diverse soils and weather. Although more solutions are becoming available, many still overlook the specific needs of the seed industry. This Living Lab aims to bridge that gap by working on solutions for in-row and inter-row cultivation that are accessible, cost-effective, and scalable, to make herbicide-free farming more feasible for farmers.
The question we have:
How can weeding equipment be adapted for open-field seed production across all crop stages, while remaining affordable and suitable for larger-scale application?
Case Living lab Healthy Soil:
Farmers with the will to change to more sustainable field management practices face two difficulties: 1) loss of income due to (temporary) reduced yields while 2) still having to invest to implement the new practices.
The Healthy Soil Living Lab aims to tackle these challenges by demonstration fields and the testing of practical solutions. One great benefit to farmers would be to have real-time soil and/or plant monitoring or any field sampling that can provide optimal field
management suggestions. Also, field equipment specialized for sustainable farming is costly and difficult to access in most areas. Any solution to improved access to (modified) machines would be valuable.
We seek collaborative solutions to address these challenges and to ensure that both monitoring systems and machinery are efficient and accessible for widespread adoption.
The question we have:
How can we increase the adoption rate of healthy agricultural practices without loss of income to farmers?
Location: World Horti Center, Europa 1 Naaldwijk (NL)
Date: February 5, 2026, from 12.00 : 18.00.