The cooperation forum “functional plant ingredients” took place on 1st October 2009 in Wolnzach, Germany. The small city Wolnzach is situated in the region called “Hallertau”, the world’s largest hop cultivation area. Due to that, the forum was held in the german hop museum and the hop plant as a supplier of many active ingredients was focused on.

All in all, eleven presentations were held from persons representing research at the university but also industrial representatives and were divided into three main topics:

• raw material, processing and characterization
• applications in pharmacy, food and cosmetic
• development of new application fields using the example of hop

Although, animal feed industry was not especially mentioned, the presentations supplied some very useful information that will further be investigated within our work.

The day before the official forum, it was possible to visit the hop research center and a traditional hop farm (cultivation and harvest). In the hop research center, we heard about the breeding of hop plants, analytical methods for characterization of hop ingredients, different properties of the hop types. During a tour in the “Busch-Farm”, the harvesting, drying and conditioning process of the plant were explained. Afterwards, the traditional product of hop application was tasted together with delicious Bavarian food.