ZALF conducts scientific research on causal relationships and interactions in agricultural landscapes and the development of ecologically and economically sustainable land use systems.

To this end, ZALF covers a wide range of topics from basic to application-oriented research and contributes to public welfare by means of scientific knowledge transfer to relevant target groups in society, politics and the economy.

The stony and sandy soils and the dry regions in eastern Germany led Erwin Baur to found the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Plant Breeding Research.

The ZALF campus in Müncheberg also features an experimental orchard headed by Hilmar Schwärzel, with a collection of 1,000 varieties distributed among 4,000 individual trees.

The company founders Manfred Seyfarth and Bernd Fürst and their team started their own business in the field of scientific instrument engineering, including the production of PE-HD lysimeter stations[5]