Presidential visit to the greenhouses

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eli

27 March 2025, modified on 28 April 2025

On Wednesday March 26, the Earth and Life Institute was honoured to receive the visit of His Excellency Tharman Shanmugaratnam, President of the Republic of Singapore.

The President visited the greenhouses of the Plant Cultivation Technology Platform (SEFY), dedicated to agronomic research and adaptation to climate change.

Professor Xavier Draye explained the experiment being conducted in one of the greenhouses.

This greenhouse is dedicated to research (many compartments, each with its own climate regulation), and it has been designed in order to reduce its carbon footprint (double glass, insulation, cogeneration heating, natural cooling, LED lighting).

It hosts a technology that is unique in the world: a robot designed to monitor plant roots. The aim of the experiment is to study the resilience of plants to certain difficult climatic conditions.

"Climate change has already started to impact our food systems"

"Plants don’t go to the river when it’s dry; they don’t go under the umbrella when it’s too sunny; they don’t hide when a pathogen is around. They have no other choice to cope with or to manage, explains Xavier Draye.

Where animals have developed learning based on lifetime experience, plants have developed adaptation by means of natural selection across generation. If a plant species is consistently exposed to dry conditions during hundreds of generations, it is likely to adapt to these conditions and develop strategies to cope with drought.

Unlike learning, this is a very slow process. Way too slow in regard of the speed of climate change which has already started to impact our food systems.

One of the things we can do is to accelerate innovation in agriculture and upstream and this is a common theme in most of the researchs conducted in this greenhouse."

Marc Migon and Thomas Dagbert were also on the site to present the greenhouses and talk about the experiment.

Minister, Rector and media present

Also present during the visit were the Minister-President of the Walloon Government Adrien Dolimont, the Governor of the Province of Walloon Brabant Gilles Mahieu, the Mayor of the City of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve Nicolas Van der Maren, and the Rector of UCLouvain Françoise Smets.

The President and visitors showed great interest in the experiment presented and its potential for the agriculture of the future.

A number of Belgian and Singaporean media were also on hand to cover the President's visit and to talk about the scientific work of the Earth and Life Institute's researchers.

Congratulations to our teams for highlighting the work carried out in our greenhouses.

Article & photos: Emmeline Van den Bosch

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eli | Louvain-la-Neuve

"Climate change has already started to impact our food systems"

Minister, Rector and media present