Ad Vrolijk is the program leader of the hybrid TPS breeding program at HZPC Research in the Netherlands, with a testing hub in Nairobi Kenya in partnership with CIP. The program has a primary focus on potato breeding for Sub Sahara Africa.

Growing up in a farmers community, Ad developed a passion for growing food crops. The choice to obtain a plant breeding degree at Wageningen University did not come as a surprise to anyone. Ad has a preference for breeding programs which require solving a logistic puzzle, balancing between the requirements to move forward as fast as possible within practical constraints. He started his career in European small grains with a winter nursery in South America, and used his acquired knowledge on how to build an effective breeding cycle on breeding a product that is expected to revolutionize potato farming but has been widely believed to be impossible: hybrid TPS, which started in 2011. Ad never questioned íf hybrid TPS would become successful; the question was whén. With a breeding team of 15 people in the Netherlands, supported by the clonal breeding team’s expertise and laboratory services and a breeding hub in the center of the TPS target region, Ad guided the development of the first HZPC hybrid to it’s first success in 2025. With a yearly improvement visible in the pipeline, Ad expects to build a solid portfolio of hybrid TPS varieties which can perform well in Kenya and abroad.