Roland Gerhards

Prof. Dr. Roland Gerhards is a full Professor at the University of Hohenheim, where he leads the Herbology group within the Institute of Phytomedicine. He is also an active member of the interdisciplinary initiative Hohenheim Tropen.

His research centres on herbology and weed science, with a strong emphasis on precision agriculture, real-time weed detection using advanced computer-vision techniques, and sustainable mechanical weed control. Current efforts integrate deep-learning object detectors such as YOLO and transformer architectures into field-ready systems and investigate soil-physical interactions under precision hoeing in ridge-tillage maize production.

Recent publications (2025) highlight a clear trend towards digital farming solutions that combine machine learning, robotics, and field agronomy to reduce herbicide dependency and enhance crop productivity.

Prof. Gerhards teaches several courses including the Colloquium on Herbology, a lecture with excursions on Methods of Weed Control, and contributes to the Ph.D. Seminar Phytomedicine.