Today, I had the privilege of stepping into Nutreco’s new Garden of the Future in the PhytoValley, a pioneering hub dedicated to harnessing the power of plants for animal health, nutrition, and a more sustainable world.
What struck me most was a stunning explanation of why medicinal plants matter so profoundly in establishing health. The message was not about disease, but about resilience, about the host-mediated response and the ability of *complex networks of botanical compounds to address equally complex metabolic challenges*, in animals as well as in humans.
➡️ This perspective reframes how we think about botanicals, and I think it is nothing short of a breakthrough in our scientific understanding of what makes them so extraordinary.
Within the Garden of the Future, innovation comes to life through a full spectrum of activities: screening promising plant candidates, building sophisticated biological models to predict their potential, analysing plant chemotypes, refining propagation methods, and developing cultivation protocols for global supply partners. Each step ensures that once these plants are ready, they can be transformed through carefully defined processes into feed materials or feed additives with real impact.
From the high-tech greenhouses now on the drawing board, to experimental cultivation plots, to a team that seamlessly integrates advanced machine learning with time-honoured botany, this is a place where ideas quite literally take root and grow into practical solutions for global challenges.
What feels most important, however, is Nutreco’s ability to articulate and validate, through rigorous science, a fundamental principle of botanical use that the entire industry can benefit from.
In the Garden of the Future 🌿 🥗 ♾️
