ENDURE said goodbye and thanks to an old friend and one of its founding members in May, with the retirement of Piet Boonekamp (left in photograph) of Wageningen University and Research Centre’s Plant Research International. He has been replaced on the ENDURE Executive Committee by his former colleague, Willem Jan de Kogel.
Piet and Wageningen’s Plant Research International played an important role in launching the ENDURE Network of Excellence (2007 to 2010), drawing on their experience of ‘putting research to work’ to coordinate the ENDURE Information Centre. Dutch scientists were also very active in ENDURE’s integration and research activities, including the case studies on major crops. Since then, Piet and his colleagues have continued to be active as ENDURE was transformed into a European Research Group.
ENDURE coordinator Antoine Messean (pictured right in photograph), from INRA in France, visited the Netherlands for Piet’s retirement party. He praised Piet for his invaluable contribution to the networking of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) research and development in Europe.
Antoine noted that the ENDURE Network of Excellence on IPM was designed to integrate capacities, competences and infrastructures between institutes, providing the opportunity for scientists to work together for the first time.
“Networking IPM is not just about defragmentation of R&D between countries, it’s also about defragmentation between disciplines and between different visions of IPM (there are more than 30 definitions of IPM!),” said Antoine. “You have always been at the heart of the joint and continuous effort to...come up with a joint vision of IPM.
“All through the ENDURE project and its continuation through the ERG, you have been positive, constructive and committed to reach consensus, as you have also been within the ERA-NET C-IPM. Whenever we needed a moderator and a facilitator, we knew we could count on you and that you would do an excellent job.”
He noted that Piet always had a keen eye on finding mutual benefits, both when working together and when implementing IPM, and would constantly look to the introduction of IPM in practice, asking “What is in it for the adviser? What is in it for the farmer?”
“Your dedication and your attitude have had a great impact on the atmosphere within the group,” Antoine added. “On top of that, you are great company. On behalf of all ENDURE, PURE and C-IPM colleagues, I just want to say thank you.”
Before retirement, Piet was Business Unit Manager of the Biointeractions and Plant Health unit, which focuses on plant diseases from genes to ecosystems in order to provide tools for IPM.
He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Public-Private Plant Health research programme financed by the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture and the agricultural sector and, in addition to representing Wageningen in the ENDURE network, performed a similar role in the European Research Area Network (ERA-Net) of Coordinated IPM (C-IPM). He is Vice -President of the European Federation of Plant Pathology (EFPP) and President of the Royal Netherlands Society of Plant Pathology (KNPV).
Piet began his scientific career in immunology and diagnostics at the Dutch National Institute of Health (RIVM in Bilthoven), at the University of Leiden and Missouri University in Kansas City (USA). He first visited Wageningen in the mid 1980s to launch a research unit on monoclonal antibodies to develop diagnostics for plant pathogens and played an important role in setting up European collaboration in this field. In 2000, he was appointed manager of change participating in a large merging process of the various plant institutes at Wageningen, establishing the Plant Sciences Group and the Biointeractions and Plant Health unit.
His successor, Willem Jan de Kogel, studied biology at the University of Utrecht and finished his PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 1997 on the interactions between thrips and resistant host plants. Since then he has worked at Wageningen, first as a researcher in entomology and then as team leader in the business unit led by Piet. Since January 1, 2016, he is Business Unit Manager for Biointeractions and Plant Health. Since 2001 he has also been a programme leader for several research programmes on plant health funded by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs.
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