Videos

In order to provide the growing world population with sufficient protein, Reindert Devlamynck (University of Ghent) focuses on duckweed. In addition to ducks, he also wants people to eat this tasty little plant and is setting a good example for himself 🍽

Fertilization is crucial in agriculture, but over-fertilization causes environmental pollution and all-rich algae growth in our watercourses. Wouldn't it be great if plants and crops could grow well with less fertilizer? That's what Astrid Gadeyne wants to achieve in her PhD.

Frederik Engelen is working on vaccines for cattle. This way, he wants to ensure that beef does not become contaminated with a dangerous variant of the e-coli bacterium.

Lucas Vanhaelewyn (Universiteit Gent) studies plants to try to unravel how they actually 'see' and respond to different types of lights. This knowledge can help to optimize the conditions for plants and crops to grow better.

Like humans, plants are constantly attacked by diseases. Joren De Ryck (VIB - UGent) does research on a bacterium called Ralstonia, which can infect and kill all these crops in a few weeks time.

A question: if a pig farmer has 10.000 pigs and you know that 1 pig produces 4.5kg of manure each day, how much manure does the farmer have to deal with on a yearly basis? That's right: a sh*tload of manure. A good thing Natalia Donoso is researching how pig farmers can process this manure in a sustainable way.

Winter, with its cold temperatures, is not the favourite season of our farmers. Certain plants and crops suffer greatly from the cold. But did you know that these plants themselves have the key to withstand the cold? Antoine Persyn explains exactly how this works.