Prospects in agricultural engineering in the information age : technological developments for the producer and the consumer

This paper has been motivated by the advances in the field of Information Technologies and cites recent applications in solving engineering problems in agriculture. Applications examples from authors' research and development are presented in short and future speculations are connoted. Even with the limited number of application areas treated in this contribution, it is clear that in the future a strong interaction between biology and engineering will form the solid base for interesting developments. IT is the enabling technology for both the scientist and the farmer, in the laboratory and in the farm.