2019 DAAD Alumni Seminar Tropical Day

On behalf of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) the University of Kassel and the German Institute for Tropical and Subtropical Agriculture (DITSL) in Witzenhausen organized the

"Technical and social innovations for sustainable agri-value chain development and job creation in rural areas".

^10th-17th September 2019 in Witzenhausen, Germany

followed by a visit to the most important conference on tropical and subtropical agriculture and natural resource management "Tropentag 2019",
18-21 September 2019 in Kassel, Germany

Overview of the seminar

The seminar and conference visit are offered by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in the framework of the program Alumni Special Projects(www.daad.de/alumni-special-projects). The interna-tional DAAD Alumni Seminar is organized and hosted by the Department of Agricultural Engineering in the Tropics and Subtropics of the Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences of the University of Kassel(www.uni-kassel.de/fb11agrar/en/sections/agrartechnik/home.html), Prof. Dr. Oliver Hensel and DITSL Witzenhausen(www.ditsl.org). The costs will be mainly covered by funds from the DAAD provided by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

The seminar targets Germany Alumni from developing countries (DAC country nationals) who studied, carried out research or worked in Germany for at least 3 months and are presently living and working in their home countries. The Alumni should be professionally involved in development oriented tropical and subtropical agriculture, natural resource management, social sciences, agricultural engineering and/or business & marketing in the framework of rural or urban, public or private sector development, and/or are working for academic, educational or development organizations, NGO's, donor agencies or private enter-prises. The prospective participants should be potential multipliers in a position to spread the acquired knowledge and experience and/or take decisions on implementation.

The main objective of the seminar is to promote exchange between the participants, facilitate international scientific cooperation and qualify the participants in the field of technical and social innovations for agri-value chain development and job creation. The seminar will foster exchange of experiences, establishment of international networks between the participants, scientific discourse with regard to innovative ideas and international academic cooperation in this field. It will stimulate and promote ideas for joint research, strat-egy development and knowledge transfer.

The seminar is scheduled in the run-up to the Tropentag 2019 in Kassel(www.tropentag.de), the most important conference on tropical and subtropical agriculture and natural resource management.

The Topics

The main topics covered during the DAAD Alumni Seminar are:

• Postharvest-technology, quality aspects of post-harvest treatments and reducing of post-harvest losses
• Quality aspects of food production and processing
• Resource efficient plant production
• Sustainable production due to technical optimization and resource conservation
• Social ecology and transdisciplinary research