inSALSA empowers smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to adopt sustainable agricultural practices by promoting the use of biologicals as alternatives to conventional agrochemicals. Through Living Labs, the project integrates indigenous knowledge, stakeholder co-creation, and gender-sensitive approaches. It combines field testing, biodiversity monitoring, and social analysis to improve understanding, ensure inclusive adoption, and develop robust, evidence-based protocols suited to local conditions.

The AUI comes in as a research support site to the planned living labs that tests one specific biological material that is of great interest to our partners: sheep wool pellets. For this, the AUI carries out greenhouse experiments with sheep wool pellets on tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) regarding drought and salinity stress. Testing how optical observations with AI interpretation through a phone app developed by one of our partners predict plant stress and yield is also part of our research.

BS and MS projects within this project are available to interested students. Please contact [email protected]!