Milika Buurman has been appointed as Senior Pea Breeder at Limagrain UK Ltd to head up the team responsible for breeding the Nickerson combining pea and Sharpes vining pea varieties.  Milika was trained at the internationally-renowned Dutch agricultural university of Wageningen, where she gained a degree in plant breeding.  Milika then spent time in the cereal breeding department at the PBI in Cambridge before moving to Birds Eye to head their vining pea breeding programme.

She takes over from Dr Keith Fox, who has led the programme for the last 16 years.  Under his leadership, the team has produced a range of highly adaptable varieties which have achieved significant market shares in geographical areas as diverse as the United Kingdom, Spain, United States of America and New Zealand.

"Our success can be attributed to Keith’s vision of selecting varieties which recognise the demands of all the important links in the chain from farmer, processor and supermarket distributor right through to the housewife," says Milika.  "I look forward to continuing with this philosophy and to bring further innovative varieties to the marketplace using some of the advanced new technologies already employed in developing our varieties of the major arable crops."

Milika is based at the Limagrain UK Ltd. plant breeding and research station at Docking in North Norfolk, where the pea breeding programme provides improved new varieties not only for the company’s combining pea varieties sold under the 'NICKERSON' brand, but also for the 'SHARPES' range of vining peas.