Fields of Activity

The working area Smart Integrated Agricultural Systems deals with the development and evaluation of innovative technology and new systems to support the transformation of agriculture. The digitalization plays an increasingly important role; it creates the conditions for disruptive changes in agricultural production systems.

Therefore, we are exploring the potential of sensors and digital technologies for crop cultivation and livestock farming, with the aim of rethinking them more strongly within the system. One focus is on the tension between emissions from livestock farming and animal welfare, and another focus is on physical soil protection.

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The working area Biomass to Products investigates the entire value chain of biobased chemical products to develop and evaluate technologies for transforming the economic system towards a climate-neutral, circular bioeconomy.

In doing so, we evaluate and characterize various renewable resources and agricultural residues, which we chemically or enzymatically treat depending on the requirements. The pretreated biomasses are then chemically/catalytically and biotechnologically converted into raw products. We investigate the conversion process using chemical or biotechnological methods, or both in parallel, to determine the best possible conversion process and carry out process development. The purified raw product is then used to produce biopolymers and materials, and their properties are characterized and their suitability for selected applications is evaluated.

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