Together with the director and other deputy director Ms. van den Hurk forms the management team of Plantum and is in particular responsible for the international activities of the association. Furthermore, she is responsible for the vegetable seed department of Plantum, international policies including corporate social responsibility, as well as the biodiversity dossier, in particular the debate on Access and Benefit Sharing(ABS). She represents the seed sector in the international meetings of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the Nagoya Protocol and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for food and Agriculture (IT PGRFA) and is actively involved in the implementation of the international agreements in Europe and other countries. Within the seed sector she is leading various committees on this item, such as the Coordination Group on genetic Resources of the international Seed Federation (ISF), and the Working Group Biodiversity of the European Seed Association EuroSeeds. Until 2019 she also chaired and the international Taskforce on ABS of the international Chamber of Commerce (ICC). She is still an active member of this taskforce.
Ms. van den Hurk has an MSc in Plant Breeding. Before joining Plantum about 22 years ago she has been working as a plant breeder in vegetables at Nunhems Seeds, as research fellow on biodiversity conservation in Italy and Colombia at Bioversity, and as teacher at an agricultural university in Mekele, Ethiopia.
