Since the end of my studies in Molecular Life Sciences in Berlin, Germany, I have been employed at the Institute for Food and Environmental Research as a project manager. My task is to write project ideas and applications, as well as to process funding projects. At the same time, I am pursuing my PhD and for this I am investigating the stability of DNA in processed foods.

In the course of the Bio4Food project, the ILU receives five different crop residues from the project partner CREA in Italy (tomato, artichoke, basil, fennel, parsley). My task is to produce extracts from these so-called crop wastes and to make the extracts, as well as the solid extraction residues, available for further trials. These include composting trials, field and pot trials by CREA in Italy, as well as efficacy tests and toxicological studies on a laboratory scale by UGent in Belgium.

At the ILU, the extracts are tested for their antioxidant capacity and total polyphenolic content to complement their characterization.