Institute of Land Use, Engineering and Precision Farming Technology

About us

As a result of the integration of research and education which calls for the close cooperation of an increasing number of scientific fields, the Institute for Land Utilisation, Regional Development and Technology was established on 1st January 2007, managed by university professor János Nagy. The Institute involves the previously independent Department of Land Utilisation and the Department of Mechanics, as well as the newly established Department of Regional Development.

The teaching of the subject of Cultivation started in October 1868 at the National Higher Education Economic Institute in Debrecen-Pallag. This subject is still taught at the Department of Land Utilisation, which is part of the Institute. The subject Soil science and meadow cultivation was taught by prominent personalities such as Imre Deininger or Kálmán Kerpely, who was the first in Hungary to develop moisture-preserving tillage methods (1910) advocate of renewing farming. Cultivation has always been among the taught subjects in the institute which changed its name several times. Lectures were held by renowned professional such as János Hauser, Sándor Soltész, György Dezső and Gusztáv Adolf Manninger Sr.

In the eighties and nineties, the cultivation group consisted of János Dezső, János Nagy, László Huzsvai and László Nyiri, who was an invited lecturer. In 1998, the Cultivation and Regional Development Research Group of the Hungarian Academy of Science and the University of Debrecen was established under the management of János Nagy. This institute became the regional development centre of the North Great Plain region as a result of the fruitful cooperation with the Centre of Regional Research of the Hungarian Academy of Science and its Debrecen department (led by Béla Baranyi scientific advisor). The research group was a forerunner of establishing an independent department.

In 2000, the Centre for Agricultural Sciences of the University of Debrecen was established within the frame of the university integration as a planning and management unit. This event provided an opportunity to establish the Department of Cultivation and to develop a close cooperation with the Department of Crop Production. The department was organised around three independent professional fields which remained the main pillars even today. The first of these areas is conventional tillage, more specifically cultivation and soil protection. The second is quantitative agroecology and its modelling and the third is regional development.

The Department of Agrotechnology was established in 2006. The teaching of mechanisation had a great emphasis even at the establishment of the higher education institute in 1868, when general mechanics was a basic discipline and farming mechanics and machinery was a specialised subject. Economic architecture was an auxiliary subject. In 1869, a machinery exhibition and a reaping and harvesting competition was organised. In 1870, one of the five departments was the Department of Technical Studies. In 1971, an experimental machinery station was established at the study farm. Pál Sporzon Jr. was an internationally renowned professional of the department and he won the golden medal at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1900 for the grass cutter developed by him. János Göllner and János Erdei were also very respected professionals of the department. In 1953, mechanisation became a regularly taught subject again at the Department of Technology. In addition, mathematics, physics, culture technique and architecture were also taught at the department. In 1959, the Department of Mechanics was established, but the subjects belonging to culture technique were still taught by this unit. The structural development of the department was finalised in 1966, when the subjects of culture technique were withdrawn from the Department of Mechanics and an independent Department of Culture Technique was established. From 1999, the subjects of physics and agrometeorology were added to the Department of Mechanics and the Agrometeorological Observatory also became an annexed unit.

The Department of Regional Development led by university professor Béla Baranyi was established in 2010 with the aim for future engineers to get to know the history of development of European and Hungarian agriculture and to make them acquainted with the past and present of general European integration processes, as well as the European Union subsidisation (structural) policy, with special emphasis on the basic principles and Hungarian practice of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Last update: 2022. 08. 04. 08:29