Climate change and extreme weather have far-reaching impacts on agriculture. They do not only affect agricultural production, but also fundamental assets that shape agricultural livelihoods. In this dissertation, I study the relation of weather and climate with agricultural land tenure in low- and middle-income countries. Secure access to land is of vital importance for farmers, but insecure tenure is a reality for millions of farmers around the globe. They are unsure whether they will be able to continue farming ...

The global urban population is expected to reach 5.2 billion by 2030 and by mid-2023 approximately 4.6 billion out of more than 8 billion population were living in towns or cities. This represents approximately 57% of the total global population and is set to reach 60% by 2030. India’s urban population is expected to reach 607 million by 2030 and by mid-2030 40% of the total population will be living in urban areas. Growing urban population has multi-sectoral and dimensional implications in the rural, peri-urban, and ...

The use of biochar as an additive in anaerobic digestion (AD) is a potential pathway to enhance AD while promoting biomass-to-biochar value chain within a circular bioeconomy. Biochar, a novel biomaterial, serves for managing residual biomass following the cascading use principle, prioritizing material use over sole energy generation. AD, as a well-established method for biogas production and organic substance management, plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. Therefore, this thesis investigated the ...

There is great interest, not only in technologically advanced societies, in developing innovative sources of raw materials, especially lignocellulosic biomasses such as cereal straw, which do not interfere with food production. In Germany, 4 – 9 million tons of cereal straw, mainly wheat, are utilized annually, corresponding to an energy potential of 57 – 129 PJ/a. Lignocellulose, found in plant cell walls, consists of hemicellulose, cellulose, and lignin, and it requires complex fractionation to enable its polymers ...

Milk proteins are one of the heat-sensitive nutritional components, especially whey proteins changing their structure through thermal treatment, consequently denaturizing and aggregating. The transformation of native whey proteins structure in presence of shear stress resulted in the microparticulation, which affected the functional properties. Many authors investigated these parameters with different conditions; however, understanding the combination of relevant parameters of the microparticulation process of whey ...

Meat drying has a long tradition worldwide and technically dried meat is increasingly valued as a low-fat snack or high-protein food product. Convection drying is widely used in industrial food preservation and has to provide high process efficiency and high product qualities, which can be contradictory. Therefore, it is important to understand the changes that occur in the product in order to develop drying strategies that consider process and product efficiency each at an acceptable level. The objective of this ...

Die vorliegende Arbeit umfasst Studien zur Untersuchung technischer und ökologischer Aspekte bei der Nutzung von Restbiomassen in den Nutzungspfaden Energieerzeugung und Aktivkohleproduktion. Im Mittelpunkt der jeweiligen Untersuchung stand das Verfahren zur integrierten Erzeugung von Festbrennstoff und Biogas aus Biomasse (IFBB) und dessen Einfluss auf technische und ökologische Aspekte bei der Verwertung von Restbiomassen. Im Zuge von Naturschutz- und Landschaftspflegemaßnahmen auf extensiv bewirtschafteten ...

This thesis combines experimental work on heterogeneous crop populations (HP) and species mixtures (SM) with a social scientific and participatory approach. Chapter 1 introduces crop communities as a concept to integrate multiple approaches to diversify farming systems. HPs provide intraspecific and SM interspecific diversity in crop communities. A key challenge for the genetic improvement of HPs, especially for root traits is to combine effective selection to improve HPs while maintaining intraspecific diversity. ...

The consumption of mustard, horseradish and wasabi is characterized by a pungent sensation and lachrymatory effect primarily induced by allyl isothiocyanate (AITC). This study aimed to check the possible correlation between sensory-perceived pungency and the quality-determining pungency-inducing ingredients of mustard. Primarily, the detection thresholds of sinigrin in a water-based matrix and AITC in water- and oil-based matrices were determined in a prestudy and a main study. In the prestudy, the resulting value ...

Human-induced climate change already impacts agriculture and food security, with varying impacts on regions, communities and individuals. There is an urgent need to increase agricultural resilience to ensure food security for a growing world population under humaninduced climate change. Climate data is a necessary resource not only to better understand climate impacts but also to manage and minimise current and future negative climate impacts on agriculture. However, there are large uncertainties in observations of ...