The overall and long-term goal of our work is to impact on improved management, sustainability and (bio-)safety of living resources through interdisciplinary scientific research and up-to-date teaching. The research portfolio (see graph) of the IFA-Tulln comprises basic, translational and applied research in the following areas which are crucial to reach this long-term goal:

• sustainable production systems
• environmental biotechnology
• food- and feed safety, biosafety
• bioactive substances

According to these areas, our research comprises the development of sustainable agricultural production systems in order to provide sufficient healthy food, feed and renewable materials for human needs including microbial energy conversion and the production of bio- and composite materials from renewable resources. Special emphasis is laid on the improvement of disease resistance in major crop plants through testing genetic resources in breeding material for resistance traits. In this context, structural and functional genomics tools as well as metabolite profiling and metabolomics based approaches are employed to study plant-fungi interactions at system level and to study new bioactive compounds e.g. for biotechnological crop protection. The application of microbial metabolism to degrade toxic substances in soil, water, waste and in vivo after consumption of (e.g. mycotoxin-) contaminated feed, is a central aim of our research conducted in the field of (environmental) biotechnology. Besides our focus on fundamental research in this area, our mission does also include applied research activities, such as the scale up of fermentation processes, the development of technical (bio-)remediation methods and the testing of innovative combined membrane bioprocesses for wastewater treatment. The research focus on high performance analytical methodology for the determination of contaminants and on adequate feeding of agricultural livestock is aimed at improving animal nutrition and the quality and safety of food and feed products.

The IFA-Tulln is organised in 6 institutes

• Institute for Biotechnology in Plant Production
• Institute for Environmental Biotechnology
• Institute for Natural Materials Technology
• Institute for Biotechnology in Animal Production
• Center for Analytical Chemistry
• Institute of Animal Nutrition, Products and Nutrition Physiology (since 07/2011)

One of the important characteristics of the IFA-Tulln is the close networking with research groups within the department, and with further research groups at the BOKU, the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. Equally important are the numerous international partnerships with academia and industry in particular within projects funded within FP7 of the European Commission, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the Christian Doppler Research Association. An integral part of our mission is to make our knowledge publicly available through publications, scientific and public presentations, conferences in combination with high-quality teaching and training of graduate and postgraduate students.