Netherlands (Kingdom of the)

(Peter Button, Vice Secretary-General, UPOV) Hello, and thank you for joining us to learn about the Triple Helix. Recently, I joined a visit to the Netherlands (Kingdom of) by our Secretary-General, Daren Tang, to learn about the role of intellectual property in the success of the Dutch economy.

According to the World Economic Forum, the Netherlands (Kingdom of) has the most competitive economy in Europe. In 2020, SMEs, which represent 99.9% of all businesses in the country, generated 62% of overall value added in the non-financial business economy and in the World Intellectual Property Organization Global Innovation Index 2021.

Netherlands (Kingdom of the) ranked number one in terms of intellectual property payments as a percentage of total trade. Of course, from a UPOV perspective, we also know the impressive achievements of Netherlands (Kingdom of the ) in plant innovation in the form of plant breeding. In 2020, Netherlands (Kingdom of the ) was the second largest country in terms of the number of applications filed in UPOV members, which is quite remarkable given the size of the country.

With this background, we were keen to discover if there was a particular formula for success, and one of the things that was frequently mentioned throughout our visit was the Triple Helix. We came to understand what the term Triple Helix means and why it's so important. So we thought it would be good to share that information more widely. Therefore, I'm very pleased to be joined by a panel of people that are ideally placed to explain the Triple Helix here in Geneva.

I'm joined by Marien Valstar, Senior policy Officer, Seeds and Plant Propagation Material, DG Agro, Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. Marien is also the president of the UPOV Council. Welcome, Marien. Thanks very much, Peter.

Joining us online from Netherlands (Kingdom of the) is Maita Latijnouwers, Senior Policy Advisor at the Directorate Strategy, Knowledge and Innovation also at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality. Thank you for joining us, Maita. Very nice to be here.

And also joining online from Netherlands (Kingdom of the) is Mark van der Knaap, Director, Anthura. Mark, thank you for taking the time to be with us today. Hello, Peter. Nice. Very nice to join you.

So let's start with the obvious question. Mark, please - could you explain what the Triple Helix is?

Yes. Thank you very much. The Triple Helix really a model of innovation and to stimulate innovation. And, it centers around collaboration between government, industry and knowledge institutes or universities. And central to this, is that the activities of these three partners. For government, that's regulation; for industry – commercialization; for knowledge institutes – it’s knowledge production.

But these activities become less separate and more of a continuum. And that serves to stimulate the speed of innovation. Now, in practice, what we see is that there are lots of informal contacts and also more formal Committees and Boards. And in all these Committees and Boards., these three partners are represented, and together they work on the innovation.

And what I often see as a common product of this collaboration are the public-private partnerships. They are, research of innovation programs in which companies, usually more than one company, collaborate with universities of which there can be one or more. And these programs, research innovation programs, are financed partly by public investment, and partly by private investment. And together they work towards solutions, that further innovation.

What does the Triple Helix look like in the plant or agriculture sector?

In our sector of the agricultural sector, we also talk about the Golden Triangle. It's essentially another term for the same thing. And, to explain what it looks like, if to go back a little bit in history, before the 1990s, innovation policy was purely tax incentives for companies.

And in the 1990s, we start to think more about how you can stimulate innovation. And also, the idea was formed that knowledge produced in universities, should have more use in practice. So then the term “valorization” was coined, the use of knowledge and the value. And that's over the 90s and until sort of 2010 replaced with more and more private investment in our innovation programs.

And then, after the economic crisis, which resulted in a huge reduction in investment in innovation in the industry, government introduced the top sectors in 2012. The top sectors are real Triple Helix organizations. We have nine of them in the Netherlands (Kingdom of). And each of them is for an economic sector, an important economic sector.

For our sector, agriculture and plants. We have two top sectors, one called Agri and Food. The other one is Horticulture and Planting Materials. And, in these top sectors we work together with the three partners, the government, universities, industry on innovation. In the Agri and Food sector, with horticulture, we have a large public-private research program.

All together it's 120 million per year investment in research and innovation. And that's, more or less half public investment and half by the private sector to partners. And that shows another big advantage of this approach: public money is really matched by a very significant private contribution, which really increases the total volume of research and innovation that we can carry out in this area.

Marien, do you have anything to add about the evolution of the Triple Helix? In the agriculture sector?

Well, yes. Peter, on top of what Maita has just told you, it's very important also to understand that in this Triple Helix approach, universities, government and the private companies sit together and develop a long-term agenda. So together they look at what are the challenges facing us in the coming 10 or 15 years.

What needs to be done to overcome these challenges? What part of that challenge is more or less basic research, fundamental research, that is typically something for universities, but also what can private companies pick up as they are part of that puzzle. Having an agenda together, with a common view and a common direction, is very important If you want to achieve results.

Mark, please could you explain the work of your company and provide an example of the Triple Helix approach in your company?

Anthura is a company specialized in breeding, propagation and production of young plants, and then in the field of tropical ornamental plants - anthurium and orchids.

So we are specialists and one good example of the Triple Helix approach is the project novel genetic and genomic tools form polymeric crops. Now markers, since breeding was first introduced in the big field crops and the big vegetable crops, existed but as a result of improved technologies and lower costs, markers were also available for smaller crops like ornamental crops.

But one big problem occured, big ornamental crops, for example, chrysanthemum, rose, orchids - they are only polyploid at more than two sets of chromosomes, for example, 4 or 6. And this makes the understanding of genome very complex. And some vegetable crops experienced the same problem, like potato breeders. They got the same problem and we missed the tools for genomic analysis for data.

And then the program was started, together with the University of Wageningen and a group of scientists, they made the tools we needed, the companies they provided genomic data and part of the cash and the government, they provided the rest of the cash. And this program was very successful.

It was four years, but it was so successful that the program has been extended for an additional four years. So I think this is a very good example of how it works for our company.

And how did you establish and find the academic partner in this arrangement?

There is always contact between companies and universities.

I think, researchers employed at the breeding companies mostly had their education at Wageningen University. And scientists at university, they speak to some breeding companies about their problems. And that's how it results in the proposal. So it often starts at the university and maybe with one other company, and then you get the first proposal and that is used to get all the companies interested to join. So I think it's all about, having connections.

Mark, what role did the government play in facilitating this cooperation with academia?

They pay 50% as a co-financed project and those scientific efforts to create new tools is very big and extra funding is necessary to get the project started.

I think that's important, but it also motivates breeding companies to cooperate, and sometimes that's difficult, but even with your competitors, it can be the extra push to start cooperation and that, then you end up with a bigger program. I think this is the role of the government in this project.

Marien, we know that Netherlands (Kingdom of the) and Dutch breeders attach great importance to plant variety protection (PVP). How do PVP and the Triple Helix complement each other as policies?

Well, in fact, the Triple Helix and PVP don't have too much in common. Because what we do in this research arena is pre-competitive technologies, pre-competitive knowledge has been developed.

And with that kind of knowledge or with those kind of tools or methods that have been created in the Triple Helix collaboration, then only then companies will start using these tools or using these insights or this knowledge to create varieties. And they will be, if they have successful varieties protected, by PVP, but that's not directly related to the Triple Helix, but of course it's one of the results. One of the fruits of the collaboration. Thank you for that.

Maita, do you see a particular relevance for PVP and the Triple Helix approach in relation to public-private partnership?

Well there there plenty,but one springs to mind, which is we have a large consortium in on the potato side, it's called Holland Innovative Potato in which, a large consortium, the potato breeders, but also the manufacturing industry, they collaborate, and they have a multi-year program.

It's quite broad, but I'll just describe the breeding part. In this breeding part they look at a wide range of pests and diseases in potato and, together they've looked at new resistance sources. So they've gone through wild solanum germplasm and found various new resistance sources to quite a lot of different diseases.

They've worked together, prepared sort of pre breeding material and, so that's the part they can to do together. And then that pre-breeding material is handed over to breeding companies, which will breed it into their elite lines. That's what they do on their own. But the first part that’s identifying resistance sources, it's something that they can collaborate on. And this is and this is another example which worked very well.

Netherlands (Kingdom of the) has a long history of this approach. What advice would you have for other countries on how to develop such a coherent approach? 

My advice to those countries that would consider such an approach is, take your time, and invest, make these funds available for a longer time.

Don't expect results in one year, really take your time. Give confidence to those that work in this collaboration. Give them 5 or 10 years to really come with results. Very important to have a long -term agenda together with your partners and to support it from a government side for a longer period.

Thank you all for that inspiring advice.

We know that we need plant breeding and new plant varieties more than ever, as farmers seek to respond to the multiple challenges facing agriculture at this time. And this is a timely explanation of how the Triple Helix and plant right protection policies can empower the work of plant breeders.

I'd like to thank the panel, Maita, Marine and Mark, for explaining the Triple Helix so clearly and for sharing their experiences, and I hope that you enjoyed learning about this concept.