English Abstract In 1990 an Innovation-oriented Research Programme on
Environmental Biotechnology was issued. Within the framework of this
programme, the Dutch government offers additional financial support to
stimulate precompetitive applied research, i.e. research that is oriented
towards the needs of the industry and can result in a full scale application
within a 5 to 10 years period. This research is not carried out by the
industry itself, but by universities and research institutes. In this
research programme the following subjects received a high-priority: -
process and reactor optimization, - application of selected micro-organisms,
- interactions between micro-organisms and solid substrates. The total
research budget is about Dfl 12 million, for a 4 years period. As a result
of the 50:50 formula, the scope of this programme will be twice as
large.
