With more than 25 000 students (over 5000 are foreign students), the University of Debrecen is the largest university in Hungary. It operates with a 640M USD yearly budget, has over 6000 employees, 14 faculties, and 363 educational buildings on 7 campuses. The university operates hospitals, high schools, laboratories and educational farms as well.

The University of Debrecen intends to become a significant food traceability competence center in Europe. Combining the theoretical knowledge, the practical knowledge, and the research facilities around the university enables to create a food security innovation hub which will provide high quality knowledge for the students.

“We expect that this cooperation will be a step forward for all parties. We unite this food safety experience with the university’s R&D, its educational farms, and the cluster of food companies around it to achieve a strong position for the parties in this very important sector.”

Zoltan Szilvassy, president of the University of Debrecen

The levels of the cooperation are:

creating a curriculum and training material for both classroom and electronic learning about farm-to-table food traceability and blockchain,

common research and development around the food traceability domain,

quality assurance system and traceability implementation for the well known Tokaji Aszú wine through the university’s Mád Wine Academy.

Laurel Group (TE-FOOD’s sales and implementation partner) brings its 25 years of international food tech industry experience to the cooperation. Laurel’s customers include companies like TESCO, Metro, Auchan, IKEA, SPAR, Adidas, Butlers, Coca Cola, Hervis, Bauhaus, Praktiker.

Istvan Bessenyei, the CEO of Laurel Group said: “ I believe, that this level of food traceability will be a basic requirement in the agriculture of the future. The universities need to prepare for educating professionals which will have high level of knowledge in this domain, and can cope with the challenges anywhere in the world.”