Early 2016
Following up on that discussion, Hartmut Stützel, Nicholas Brüggemann and Dirk Inzé wrote an article “The Future of Field Trials in Europe: Establishing a Network Beyond Bounderies” that appeared in Trends in Plant Science. This paper triggered a lot of positive response and interest from several institutes, demonstrating the willingness and need of European agricultural researchers to join in such an initiative.
As a first attempt to set this up, a small group of high-ranking institutes willing to build an ECOFE core was established, in order to collect experience with field trial infrastructure network.