June 26, 2013
I spent three more days at AVRDC: one with the
post-harvest team, another with the breeder, and the last with the manager of
the gene bank. On Monday, I spent the
day with the post-harvest specialist at AVRDC.
He explained that they are currently working on a collaborative project with
Dr. Lisa Kitinoja, from UC Davis, which promotes postharvest technologies for
small holder farmers. Apparently, many
postharvest coursework and academic disciplines have been shut down because of budget
cuts, so she has developed an online training course for regional trainers and
extension departments. The goal is to train
small holder farmers who don’t have access to new information and for regional
trainers to become qualified and then train small holder farmers locally. He informed me that upwards of 90% of farmers
are likely small-scale and have issues sourcing equipment. However, a few larger-scale commercial farms
in plantation settings (e.g. flower exporters) do exist, which are high end
operations and have a high level of investment and technology available to
them.
I also got a chance to meet with two of the research
assistant in the post-harvest department.
We talked about food safety and its relationship to vegetables,
including physical, chemical, and biological hazards. Apparently, as of recently, the FAO & WHO
are considering nutrition as an aspect of food safety...interesting! Moreover, chemical technologies have been
used to increase food safety and maintain nutrition (chlorine, hydrogen
peroxide, electrolyzed water, sand filtration etc.). We talked about the organic movement and he
said that generally, exporting operations are the ones who may uphold organic
practices to increase sales, through product differentiation. In contrast, small holder farmers have been
using agrochemicals for some time now and aren’t as incentivized to farm
organically. However, more often than
not, there isn’t the sufficient money to purchase pesticides, which are
relatively expensive, though widely available in many places, especially around
Arusha. And because farmers want to
increase their yield in order to generate more income, organic may not be a
priority in the same way it is valued in the U.S. I was also informed that relatively few
Tanzanians are aware of food safety and nutrition, so there is little consumer
demand for organic, chemical-free food. Eager
to help out and contribute to anything at all, I was able to provide
feedback/comments on 5 studies/trials that the post-harvest research team is
currently devising – these studies were: 1) evaluating packing crates for
tomato transportation 2) evaluating the use of icepacks to reduce the
deterioration of leafy vegetables during transport 3) testing ZECC efficiency
4) Cool bot efficacy and 5) solar dryer efficiency.
I spent the following day with AVRDC’s vegetable breeder,
whose son will be enrolling in Stanford undergrad for engineering in the
fall. Naturally, we were able to bond
over this, as my boyfriend Jack will be starting his master’s in Environmental
Engineering at Stanford this fall as well.
I was able to testify as to how brilliantly gorgeous the campus is and
how his son is going to love California.
As I may have said in an earlier post, AVRDC heavily values indigenous
African vegetables, which include: spider plant, African eggplant, vegetable
cowpea, Ethiopian mustard, amaranth, African nightshade, okra, and bitter gourd. Whereas exotic vegetables include: tomatoes,
peppers, and onions. The breeder
explained how breeding involves genetic enhancement and varietal development,
and the vegetable value chain is as follows:
Germplasm conservation --> germplasm development --> germplasm
utilization --> seed --> vegetable production (including tech. support) --> postharvest handling --> markets --> consumption and
nutrition
Among many things I’ve learned at AVRDC, it’s that
the vegetable industry can be complex, more complex than I had originally
conceived. Moreover, he delineated
between the two types of plant breeding processes: conventional (in which the
breeder develops the germplasm, selects, evaluates, and releases it with
farmers coming after the release stage, during the demonstration) and Participatory
Plant Breeding (PPB) (a process of development, screening, evaluation, and
release in which you invite the farmers to make the decision). They will decide based on plant maturation
within a given time period, productivity, composition, resistance to pests and
diseases, quality (taste, color, size etc.).
Furthermore, there are two types of PPB: centralized, which is conducted
onsite at the research facility, and decentralized, where selection occurs in
the target environment with the ongoing involvement of the target users. DPPB seems ideal as farmers can participate
in land preparation, weeding, etc., and it is generally believed to be more
accurate with higher rates of successful adaptation. However, DPPB can become expensive because of
frequent travel to the site and compensation for the land usage, which may not
be sustainable over the long term. He
explained some of AVRDC’s achievements in breeding and compared the two types
of varieties (open pollinated and hybrid).
He explicated the various linkages in the value chain and how AVRDC
values connections among actors, as this is the only way to ensure that
technology is disseminated and adopted by users, justifying initial investment. These partners include: national agricultural
research and extension systems, private seed companies, public seed
enterprises, processing industries, regional and international research and
development institutions, NGO development organizations, farmers and community
groups, donor/aid organizations, advanced research institutions, and students.
The breeder also raised the question of: “With the
number of mouth to feed increasing and the number of people working in
agriculture decreasing, how are we going to feed the world?” EXACTLY MY POINT!!! He hit the nail on the head, as this gets at
the heart of my Watson. He believes we
need investments in agriculture and more importantly, we need to figure out how
we are going to increase production. In
his eyes, the options are: #1 - increase the area or #2 – increase productivity
per unit of existing area. The former is
not easy/near impossible because of competition over land between farming,
population growth, urbanization, desertification, etc. with arable land
shrinking. #2, however, may be
achievable with improved genetic material and varieties and improved
agricultural practices (such as the use of fertilizers, pesticides, better soil
and water management). Although biased,
he claimed that breeders are important because we need better varieties to
increase production and because increased inputs are not enough. He also made the interesting observation that
the trend of moving people from the field to conferences/workshops is a
negative trend, since every project nowadays gives more values to meetings,
workshops, publishing than developing improved technologies. He claims that the government needs to
emphasize and incentivize young people to go into farming, breeding etc. and
that social scientists and the use of media are also important in convincing
people about the importance of investing in agriculture. Lastly, he noted how biotechnology labs and
molecular marking will be very important in the future of conventional plant
breeding, and although biotechnology may not always be widely accepted, it is
necessary to convince the population that it is okay. However, thus far, science has been unable to
justify and prove the safety of various biotechnologies (i.e. GMOs). Hmm…some food for thought.
I spent Wednesday with a genetic resources scientist,
who manages the gene/seed bank. The gene
bank on site is for short-term storage (15 degrees C temperature, 30-40%
relative humidity) and currently has about 2,360 accessions or varieties (most
are traditional African vegetables). To
maintain the conditions, it uses two ACs and 3 dehumidifiers. After harvesting the seeds, they are brought
to the dryer room to prepare them for storage.
I saw the various equipment that is used to measure seed moisture
content and took a tour of the facilities, including the seed preparation room,
drying room, and the seed storage room.
Gene/seed bank storage
Gene bank cooling
Varieties are decorative
Seeds drying
Seed dryer
I was also able to meet with a research assistant who
does work on social economics. She
explained how poverty, economic stagnation, malnutrition, hunger, disease and
education are all social issues related to community development and very much
associated factors. AVRDC believes that
training can help improve nutrition and vegetable knowledge and that education
helps people understand their impoverished situation, what the causes are, and
how to overcome it; AVRDC can help facilitate development (and trickle-down
effect). We also talked about the
differing roles of men and women.
Culturally, women have been in charge of vegetable production because it
has been historically subsistence/home consumption-related (not income
generating) – women head households and are in charge of survival and caring
for the family. In contrast, men are
responsible for cash crop production (e.g. coffee) and income generation. This has led to much of the focus in
agriculture being geared toward empowering women.
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