Activities and results of IAREF in numbers

The Institutes for Agricultural Research and Educational Farm (IAREF) are a unit of the University of Debrecen specialized for the agricultural research and education. IAREF and its legal predecessors have always played a central role in Hungarian higher education for 140 years in the fields of agricultural sciences and economics. The University of Debrecen is the only higher education institution in Hungary which has 3 research institutes: the Research Institute of Karcag, the Research Institute of Nyíregyháza and the Debrecen Educational Farm and Regional Research Institute.

• At 10 locations (Karcag, Kisújszállás, Ecsegfalva, Kunhegyes, Nyíregyháza, Kisvárda, Nagykálló. Látókép, Kismacs, Pallag) there are nearly 2,000 hectares of land used for research and production.
• 1,511 hectares are used for production of field crops.
• Incomings related to crop production made for educational purposes reached 350 million HUF in 2015.
• The activities of the Institutes for Agricultural Research and Educational Farm are facilitated by 52 prime mover and 609 machines.
• In 2015 about 600 students completed their weekly or semester practical training, which represents an increase of almost 200 compared to past years.
• IAREF deals with the breeding, seed/propagation material production and variety maintenance of 43 plant species, including their 91 varieties (f.e.: potato, sunflower, millet and the “KG Puszta” winter barely variety).
• There are 7 variety candidates under state recognition.
• IAREF deals with the breeding 2,709 livestock and the maintenance of native genotypes of animal species (the Prolific Merino of Debrecen, Tsigai sheep and bronze turkey).

Through various research projects in the last two years IAREF has been awarded 500-600 million HUF to implement projects in consortium with various companies. Besides those, scientific projects financed by research contracts are also continuously conducted in the fields of crop production, plant breeding, horticulture and animal husbandry. The AGR_PIAC projects that incorporate research of food sciences and plant breeding, are significant. IAREF has several Hungarian and international partners, including higher education institutions, research institutions, large as well as small and medium-sized enterprises and companies.

The research activities of the Institutes for Agricultural Research and Educational Farm also contributed that the University of Debrecen was included in the top 200 institutions in the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings in the field of agriculture.

At the 25th anniversary of Farmer-Expo, the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture awarded a special prize to the Research Institute of Karcag for its innovative scholarly output, which provided research that can be utilized in practice by farmers. In 2015 one of the researchers was awarded the National Excellence Award by the Zoltán Magyary Board. One of our colleagues was awarded and reached 3rd place in the Scholarly Student Circle category of the national scholarship program of K&H Bank for sustainable agriculture.