On March 31, directors and researchers of the multinational Fraunhofer They visited Cenicaña with the aim of establishing collaborative projects between both institutions.
Fraunhofer It is one of the largest applied research organizations in Germany; It has offices in several countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa. Her main areas of research are health, safety, communication, energy and the environment.
During the visit to the Cenicaña Experimental Station, advances were presented both in the work of the German organization and that of Cenicaña in three main aspects: 1) Conversion of crop residues into bioenergy; 2) Information technology and the internet of things; and 3) High precision phenotyping.
In the aspect related to bioprocess engineering, the conversion of sugarcane harvest residues to biopolymers was proposed with the implementation of a biorefinery.
In the field of information technology, a pilot project was started with the technology Wireless Backhaul (WiBack) in three stations that make up the Automated Meteorological Network administered by Cenicaña, as an alternative for connecting to the Internet in places where, due to their difficult access and / or location, their interconnection through fiber optics is not viable.
And on the subject of high precision phenotyping, experiences in the use of spectral images for identification of agronomic variables were shared.
Doctors Alonso González Mejía, director of the Palmira Colombian Agricultural Research Corporation (Corpoica), and Andrés Rubiano, representative of the ICT and Agro initiative of the Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies, attended as observers of the conference joint work.
The visit of Fraunhofer a Cenicaña was part of a tour that the multinational is carrying out through different public and private institutions in the country.