News
Renovations
In July 2025, we finished the renovations in our greenhouse. A double-layer Harmony 2047 diffusion screen plus Obscura blackout cloth now fine-tunes energy and light. Switching from SON-T to LED reduces energy costs substantially and offers far greater control capabilities. Vertical fans smooth out temperature gradients, while high-temperature perimeter piping removes cold edges for uniform growth. This was achieved with Peter Dekker Installaties, Signify, Hortiplan NV, AB Ludvig Svensson, P&I BV, De Vijlder P. NV, Maïs NV and Departement WEWIS – economie, wetenschap en innovatie. Together we’ve built a smart, sustainable, and future-proof greenhouse.
ESFRI Research Infrastructure Conference
2024-02-22
On June 5th-6th, the ESFRI Research Infrastructure conference is scheduled in Brussels, Belgium. During this conference, the VIB Agro-incubator will be visited.
Crop Innovation and Business
2024-02-22
The Crop Innovation and Business conference, featuring the latest trends in the interplay of technological innovations, market developments, business opportunities and societal demands takes place in Ghent, Belgium from March 24th till March 26th, 2024. During this conference, a tour of the Agro-incubator is planned showcasing the platform's automation and robotics, precision spraying cabinet and high-content imaging system.
Official in inauguration of the Integrated Phenotyping for Sustainable Agriculture (IPSA) platform
2023-09-26
VIB inaugurated its new facility for automated crop phenotyping. With this milestone, supported by the Flemish relaunch plan "Flemish Resilience," VIB's new research facility in Nevele is fully operational. From now on, both industrial and academic researchers can come here to test new breeding techniques, crop protection or biostimulants on a large scale. This new phenotyping installation is hallmark of the added value which VIB has been able to realize in support of innovations in agriculture and horticulture thanks to the Flemish Resilience plan. The Agro-Incubator once again leads the charge with this cutting-edge installation and confirms once more the historic and current importance of the Flemish agribiotech ecosystem.
AgroServ opens call for projects
2023-06-05
The Horizon Europe project AgroServ “Integrated SERvices supporting a sustainable AGROecological transition", a consortium of 11 ESFRI research infrastructures, opens a TransNational access (TNA) call for users from academia and industry with the aim to answer basic and applied questions related to sustainable and resilient agriculture and agroecological transition. For more information contact Stijn.Dhondt@vib.be or go to the AgroServ website.
OpsDrone Workshop
2023-05-21
Within the VLAIO-funded OpsDrone project, in the 2022 growing season, VITO investigated the use and benefits of the PhaseOne IXM 100MP camera for 3 agricultural/phenotyping applications which rely on (sub)mm resolution: wheat ear detection, disease detection in sugar beet and emergence count in lettuce. A workshop took place at the Agro-Incubator on the use of high resolution drone imagery and AI for agricultural applications.
Timeline
Robot
In March 2023, our long-awaited robot arrived.
Completion of our Team
On February 13th, 2023, the last member of our multidisciplinary team joined us. The Agro-Incubator is currently operated by eight employees. In the same week, a new round of startup teams were selected: AmphiStor, Elogium, Probitat and B'ZEOS.
Assembling New Platform
In December 2022, KG Systems started assembling the rolling tables.
Biotope
On August 16th, 2022, the first two startups for VIB's Biotope incubator program were selected: Bolder Foods and N-Fix.
Disassembling of the platform
On July 2022 the phenotyping platform from BASF-Cropdesign was disassembled to make room for a brandnew state of the art high-throughput phenotyping platform.
Inaguration of the site
The inauguration of the VIB Agro-Incubator took place in October 2021 in the presence of Flemish Minister of Innovation and Agriculture Hilde Crevits. The VIB Agro-Incubator will be instrumental to develop innovative agricultural solutions meeting climate adaptation and mitigation.
