He defended his PhD thesis on ‘Bioenergy efficiency of different technologies of cereal crops cultivation taking into account their impact on soil fertility’ in 1992 at the Ukrainian Research Institute of Agriculture. He defended his doctoral thesis on ‘Scientific basis for the formation of models of sustainable development of agroecosystems in the Forest-Steppe and Polissya of Ukraine’ at the Institute of Agroecology and Biotechnology.Since 2003, Yurii Tarariko has been a leading scientist in the field of agricultural science. He has developed scientific and practical foundations for the formation of sustainable agroecosystems; worked out the theoretical and methodological foundations of ecological and energy assessment of agro-technologies of different levels of intensification and biologisation; developed a methodology for creating models of sustainable development of energy-saving agro-ecosystems; formulated scientific and methodological provisions for the formation of competitive agricultural production in relation to modern socio-economic conditions through biologisation of agro-technologies, resource and energy saving. All these developments are presented in the form of typical models of sustainable, ecologically balanced food and bioenergy production in the Polissya, Forest-Steppe and Steppe regions of Ukraine.