The Progeno company finds its origins in the long-term scientific symbiosis between the Department of Plant production and the Department of Applied Mathematics, Biometrics and process Control of Ghent University (Belgium). In this scientifically fertile environment Dr. Steven Maenhout performed his PhD research on the statistical and computational aspects of genomic selection in hybrid maize. This academic research was performed in close collaboration with private breeding companies which assured the applicability of the resulting findings and algorithms on real world and industry sized data sets.

Encouraged by the increasing demand from industry for user friendly breeding software, the idea for starting a specialized software and service company gradually matured. Having worked several years as a commercial software and database developer prior to his PhD study, Dr. Steven Maenhout dedicated the following years to implement the Progeno computing engine whilst supervising the development of the user interface of the software. A large number of private breeding companies have been actively involved in the design and validation of the Progeno software to assure its adequacy for use by practical breeders.