agroparistech

Belgium history of food is notorious. As ilustrous as French's history of food, in Belgian cook there are friar's trick beers or  trapist's beer, butter asparagus, brusells cabbage and various "waterzooi". Several  important names of Biology are belgian, like Maurice Maetterlink (Bee's Life, Ant's Life, etc.), Van Montagu, first-one to modify vegetables genetically. But Ilya Prigogine is special. He understood life so well that his model of disipative structures the "Bruselator" decorates this website.

In northern Europe during winter, fruits and vegetables are scarce; almost a half of their needs must be imported from southern Europe or Africa. Transport costs and pollutions increases . To avoid importing, belgians have learned to produce their own fresh vegetables even in the worst cool. Green-houses are common stuff in Belgium, but this kind of agriculture is expensive, so this is not a very good solution.  In 1830 Jan Lemeers invented ENDIVE. He grew some chicory roots on hydroponics and got Chicons or chicory sprouts. He found one of the healthiest salads already on the market.

Vidimport is the biggest producer of Endives in Latin America and deals other chicory products like

• Fresh Vegetable Chicory
• Chicory and coffee (New Orléans Style "Café du Monde")

Otherwise, Chicory is on top of technology, as we can see from the work of:

• Nestlé who prepares ALPO, a pet's food with chicory roots. Alpo promotes stablishment  of a kind of benefical bactery, the Bifidus helping  to keep animals healthy
• Pharmaceutical companies who prepares diabetics sugar, Fructose; from chicory.
• Nuclear Physics companies who syntethize tritiated-inulin, an analytical reagent useful in life sciences.