Our research
Based on 100 years knowledge and international experience in Agro Food, we conduct applied research for sustainable innovations, combining fundamental and applied knowledge in industrial research projects.
Technology for objective quality control
Wageningen University & Research is a world leader in objective quality control of fruits, vegetables and crops. We give breeders, growers, merchants and retailers detailed insight into the internal and external quality of products throughout the fresh chain. Combining many years of knowledge and expertise in post-harvest, robotics and sensor technologies, as well as fresh produce and supply chains, we develop objective systems for fast and reliable quality assessment and quality prediction – tailor-made, non-invasive and enabling automation.
Robotics for hands-free production
The future for food production, handling and processing is hands-free farming, hands-free harvesting & hands-free assessment. The skilled workforce that accepts repetitive tasks under harsh climatic conditions is decreasing rapidly. There’s a growing need to automate labour intensive tasks. Next to that robots also provide new assets such as: acquiring spatial specific data, able to work in harsh conditions, continuous improvement and even learning capabilities and the ability to work 24/7.
Smart and high quality food processing
High quality smart food handling, processing and preparation is achieved with automated, data-driven food production and preparation. Aligned to the individual needs of customers and consumers, Wageningen University & Research contributes to accomplishing predictable, reliable, high quality food production based on facts.
More and better with fewer resources
To provide the optimal treatment to a plant is called precision agriculture, satellite farming or site specific crop management. Precision agriculture is therefore a farming management concept based on observing, measuring and responding to inter and intra-field, greenhouse or climate cell, variability of crops. Wageningen University helps to be more sustainable by minimizing inputs (fertilizers, chemicals, energy, footprint, soil compaction, water use and starting materials) and maximize an optimal nutritious, high quality product as output. Products that are delivered at the right time-spot and in the right quantity. We develop intelligent machine end sensor solutions interacting with tech-suppliers and end-users.
Optimal breeding with robotics
Food production relies on the efficiency of plants. To find and select the best performing variety in a nursery, greenhouse and on the field, automation and large scale testing is key. Wageningen University & Research is specialised in sensing & plant phenotyping with non-destructive, fast and robust applications. In co-development with machine builders and breeding companies we develop objective methods to collect data for describing variety performances in all growth stages.
Smart Farming and Robotics in Livestock Farming Systems
Smart Farming is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyses temporal, spatial and individual data and combines it with other information to guide site, plant or animal specific management decisions to improve resource efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production. In practice comparable concept for Smart Farming are called Precision Agriculture when it deals more with plants and soil processes and Precision Livestock Farming when it deals with animal specific management support.