Our topics

Digital and automated applications will help to ensure that water, fertilisers and pesticides are used precisely and in accordance with the requirements of plants. This saves resources and enables optimum yields. We are also developing smart assistance systems for fruit cultivation - automated and energy-autarchic.

We develop and use sensor systems to assess the condition of soil and plants. The sensor data provide real-time information on nutrient and water requirements, growth and disease pressure as the basis for precise and automated control of e.g. fertilization or plant protection.

Our research focusses on livestock-environment interaction - aiming at a transparent, animal-friendly, environmentally friendly and economic production. Our research follows the One Health approach - thus including the perspective of preventive health care into agriculture. 

Food should be healthy and safe - free of contaminants and pathogens. We are working on new, residue-free technologies for gentle hygienisation that do not damage even sensitive fresh products such as berries or salad: Cold plasma, high pressure application, and ...

How should packaging be designed to preserve the quality and safety of fresh products such as strawberries or salad for as long as possible? We optimize the packaging design to extend the shelf life of food products and to reduce losses …

Insects can provide high-quality proteins and fats and are attractive in terms of resource consumption. We develop eco-innovative technological solutions for the use of insect fractions, including proteins, lipids and chitin. 

Bioeconomic production systems are highly complex. We develop concepts how to use digital technologies and methods of data science to control material flows and processes in a knowledge-based, temporally and spatially differentiated and increasingly automated manner ...

How can residual materials be converted into valuable materials? Whether rice bran, organic textile remains or the contents of organic waste bins: we use biotechnology to produce biobased chemicals such as lactic acid that can be further processed into biopolymers such as PLA ... 

We optimize the energy production from so far unused residual and waste materials such as foliage or prunings, following a cascading utilization concept. Our vision is the biogas production of the future as an element of a bio-economic circular economy - from microbiology to data science ...