This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book defines the new field of "Bioeconomy" as the sustainable and innovative use of biomass and biological knowledge to provide food, feed, industrial products, bioenergy and ecological services. The chapters highlight the importance of bioeconomy-related concepts in public, scientific, and political discourse. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors outline the dimensions of the bioeconomy as a means of achieving sustainability. The authors are ideally situated to elaborate on the diverse aspects of the bioeconomy. They have acquired in-depth experience of interdisciplinary research through the university's focus on "Bioeconomy", its contribution to the Bioeconomy Research Program of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, and its participation in the German Bioeconomy Council. With the number of bioeconomy-related projects at European universities rising, this book will provide graduate students and researchers with background information on the bioeconomy. It will  familiarize scientific readers with bioeconomy-related terms and give scientific background for economists, agronomists and natural scientists alike.

Iris Lewandowski holds the chair for Biobased Products and Energy Crops at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany. She is head of the international Master Course "Bioeconomy" at the University of Hohenheim, is a member of the Bavarian Expert Panel on Bioeconomy and leads and co-ordinates national and EU-funded bioeconomy research projects. She has previously worked as Global Biomass R&D Program Manager at Shell Global Solutions, Amsterdam and as Senior Biomass Researcher at the University of Utrecht, both in the Netherlands. Her research interest primarily focuses on sustainable biomass supply systems and the development of biobased value chains. She has published 66 peer-reviewed papers and completed work on several book chapters relating to bioenergy and perennial biomass crops. She is a member of the Editorial Boards of the Journals "Biomass Conversion and Biorefinery" and "GCB Bioenergy".