Mari Carmen Carrillo

CTAEX is a private non-profit R&D centre based in Extremadura, southwest Spain, founded in 2000 by a consortium of complementary agri-food entities. It addresses multiple scientific areas across the agri-food value chain, including sustainable agronomy, food production, biotechnology, and by-product management. The Centre brings together 70 partners or associates belonging to the most representative agri-food sectors such as tomato, tobacco, wine, rice, olive, livestock, aromatic and medicinal plants, forestry, and natural ingredients,covering both primary and secondary processing as well as the valorisation of agri-food by-products. CTAEX’s research activity, whose results are transferred through its Knowledge Transfer Office (KTO), is focused on two specific technological pillars: agricultural and food research. Within these areas, the research lines defined as strategic are established, structured around three cross-cutting technological axes: sustainability, agri-food diversification, and information and communication technologies (ICT). Based on these axes, priority subsectors are identified, corresponding to groups of significant relevance in the Iberian Southwest, both due to their strategic activity and their future development potential. The Centre brings with experimental farms, food pilot plants, kitchen and tasting rooms, and food quality control, physical chemical and microbiological laboratories, and equipment and process control facilities, so that it is possible to follow the complete agri-food process, “From Farm to Fork”. CTAEX supports innovation and technology transfer from primary production to consumption to enhance sustainability, competitiveness and circularity. Participation in almost all steps of the value chain of several primary sectors gives us an optimal positioning at the Center of the quadruple helix model of the regional innovation system (science, policy, industry, and society), ensuring a multi-actor approach, bi-directional co-creation and knowledge exchange processes and between the actors in all the activities we carry out.