NordGen gave lecture on old vegetable Brassicas and growing manuals

2017.12.13

What tricks do you need to know to successfully grow old kinds of Danish cauliflower, cabbage or brussels sprouts? And how does one develop understandable growing manuals? NordGen Senior Scientist Annette Hägnefelt was one of the speakers at a thematic day for plant genetic resources in Denmark.

  In August, the Danish government launched a

The strategy focuses on how these resources are to be preserved, used, developed and coordinated internationally. Yesterday, a thematic day held at Det Grönne Museum in Auning, hosted by the Ministry of Environment and Food in Denmark, discussed the strategy. NordGen participated and also contributed with a short lecture. - To achieve a perfect seed propagation result it is essential to know each individual cultivars development time from seed to generative phase. The number of days that this process takes gives you the appropriate sowing date as to reach the optimal period for flowering and harvest, Annette Hägnefelt, Senior Scientist at NordGen says.

A gardeners work

NordGen has the responsibility to preserve, develop and facilitate a sustainable use of plant genetic resources in the Nordic countries. It might sound abstract and difficult, and sometimes it its. But more often it is a matter of tackling how to induce a cabbage to bloom or how to prevent a leek to wither down and die during the winter. In other words, to preserve plant genetic resources, you need to be quite the gardener. - Also, as all employees at NordGen are hired on what’s called a Nordic contract, they are only allowed to work here for a maximum of eight years. This means that documents for maintaining knowledge and a high quality of our work is extremely important. Growing manuals is part of this quality assurance, Jette Nydam Hansen, Genetic Resources Officer at NordGen, says.