4 maaliskuuta 2026 News
With the opening of our new R&D facility Phase 11 (named ‘Dee Viate’) at our headquarters in Enkhuizen, we are taking an important step forward in expanding and futureproofing our cucumber breeding activities. Officially opened on June 5, 2025, the 2 hectare expansion includes a hightech R&D greenhouse, a sustainable energy center, and a multifunctional facility building that supports our long term ambition to meet the growing global demand for high quality vegetable seeds.
Our greenhouse features modern installations and eight independently controlled compartments, allowing us to steer each space differently. With dimmable LEDs, dedicated dehumidification systems, and fully separate climate management, we create the exact conditions needed for targeted cucumber breeding. The name Dee Viate comes from a cucumber variety known for it's reliability, cultivation efficiency and quality.
Phase 11 plays a crucial role in strengthening our breeding activities for the Nordic market. Now we as Enza Zaden can create dedicated greenhouse environments that simulate Scandinavian production systems, known for their very high light intensities and a wide variety of LED, HPS, and hybrid lighting combinations
The facility consists of multiple individually controlled compartments, allowing us to finetune climate conditions and test genetics under the exact light levels Nordic growers use. This precision enables us to breed varieties that perform reliably under these demanding conditions, accelerating our ability to bring well adapted genetics to market.
Our Senior Cucumber Breeder, Barbara Cerquetti, focuses on developing highwire long European cucumbers for markets such as Canada, the Benelux, and the Nordics.
Driven by her passion for plant breeding, Barbara moved from Italy to the Netherlands eight years ago to fully pursue her career. She shared that this step allowed her to grow professionally and contribute to breeding programmes that make a real impact for growers. What motivates her most is creating varieties with strong agronomic behaviour, resilience, and high performance, especially under the demanding highlight conditions of the Nordic market.
Barbara emphasises that partnership is essential: close collaboration with growers, distributors, and our commercial teams ensures we develop varieties that truly match market needs. She also highlights the importance of teamwork within the breeding programme, with Andreea Banita serving as the lead breeder for the Scandinavian programme during the development of key Nordic genetics.
Nordic growers work under unique and challenging circumstances. They grow under extremely high light intensities, often year round, and typically do not prune fruits, meaning plants must maintain strength and fruit set under high load.
Therefore, in our breeding for this region, we focus on:
Thanks to Phase 11, we can now select directly under these exact conditions, significantly improving accuracy and speed in our breeding process.
Our new variety (E23L.2538) reflects the progress we are making with the support of our new breeding facility. Developed for highlight systems, E23L.2538 shows:
In various grower trials, the cucumber performed exceptionally across lighting strategies. It even contributed to a world record cucumber production at the grower Prinsen.
The new cucumber breeding facility allows us to select with unprecedented precision, working under the same highlight conditions our growers in the Nordics use every day. This helps us deliver genetics that support stable, high quality production in some of the world’s most challenging year round cucumber systems.
With innovation, sustainability and grower success at the heart of our work, the facility is a key milestone in shaping the future of cucumber breeding at Enza Zaden.
Back