SMART Grant for a Smart Instrument
December 2003
NRI’s Professor of Food Safety, Ray Coker, has been awarded a £45,000 SMART grant by the UK’s Department of Trade and Industry to develop an instrument that will allow food wholesalers and retailers to test their own products for the presence of toxic chemicals, rather than having to send samples for expensive laboratory testing. The University of Greenwich is contributing an additional £15,000 to the project, which involves a joint team from NRI’s Food Management & Marketing Group and the School of Engineering.
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Ray explains: “All players in the food sector work hard to ensure that excessive levels of poisonous chemicals, from pesticides, antibiotics and hormones, to naturally-occurring poisons such as mycotoxins, do not find their way into foods. Mycotoxins are produced by certain moulds, and even minute quantities in foods and feeds can affect the health of humans, livestock and poultry, whilst high levels of contamination can cause death. The aim of the project is to develop a simpler method for the rapid detection of toxic chemicals in the food marketing chain, without the expense and time-consuming process of laboratory analysis.”
The project team led by Ray Coker of NRI’s Food Management & Marketing Group includes: Martin Nagler, an NRI Associate and former staff member (analytical chemistry); Dr Richard Seals and Dr Robert Jenner, School of Engineering (electronics and optics); and John Dominey, MSc student in the School of Engineering. The new procedure for detecting the toxins will be based on the development of a special instrument and will initially focus on the measurement of levels of mycotoxins in cereals, dried fruit and edible nuts.
Once the feasibility of the process has been established, the team then hopes to extend it to detect other undesirable chemicals in human food. A key aim of the work is that the procedure will be inexpensive and could thus be used to save lives in the developing world where staple foods, such as maize and groundnuts, can be heavily contaminated by mycotoxins. It is expected that the approach will also benefit fragile economies by supporting quality management in valuable food export markets that could otherwise be lost if suppliers cannot ensure that their products meet the importers’ quality standards.
Andrew Westby Becomes President of ISTRC
17 November 2003
Andrew Westby, NRI’s Director of Research and Professor of Food Technology, has been elected President of the International Society for Tropical Root Crops (ISTRC) at its triennial Symposium in Arusha, Tanzania, from 9 to 14 November 2003. The Symposium was attended by about 150 of the world’s leading researchers on tropical root crops. Andrew, who has previously served as the ISTRC’s Councillor for Publications, will be its President from 2003 to 2006.
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© University of Greenwich |
In his inaugural speech as President, Prof. Westby said “Tropical root crops have important roles to play in alleviating poverty and ensuring the food security of many millions of people in the developing world. In the next three years the Society will endeavour to encourage young scientists, to provide the means of sharing good practice, and to influence policy, in support of the role that root crops can play in development.”
New boost for development in post-harvest sector
4 November 2003
The post-harvest sector has the potential to contribute much more than it does to the livelihoods of poor people, but development efforts in the past have always been more focused on agricultural production. A new initiative promises to change this. The Global Post-harvest Forum (PhAction), currently chaired by NRI’s director Guy Poulter, together with FAO and GFAR have merged their own initiatives to develop a Strategic Plan for a ‘Global Post-harvest Systems Initiative for the 21st Century: Linking Farmers to Markets.’ The Strategic Plan offers:
- An innovative platform for a supply-chain approach to post-harvest development. This includes assistance with business development for private/public partnerships and particularly for poor entrepreneurs. However, supply chains can only function if all linkages are effective: the Strategic Plan allows for wide ranging interventions that can meet the needs of diverse situations in contrasting regions around the globe;
- A market-oriented approach to addressing post-harvest and production problems; and
- Full participation of stakeholders at every stage in the development and implementation of the Initiative.
In October 2003, the Strategic Plan was further developed and endorsed at a three-day workshop hosted by FAO in Rome, where over 80 stakeholders, many from developing countries, debated the relevance of the Plan on a regional basis. Once the Plan has been revised on the basis of comments and suggestions made by the workshop participants, it will be taken forward by an Interim Co-ordination Committee and may become one of GFAR’s Global Partnership Programmes. The Committee will comprise major stakeholders, including five regional representatives, PhAction, FAO, GFAR, and interested donor organizations.
On his return to NRI from the subsequent CGIAR annual meeting in Nairobi, Guy Poulter reported “I presented the Strategic Plan proposal at the CGIAR meeting, where it was well received. The possibility of funding was discussed with several potential donors, and we are hopeful that seed-funding will be forthcoming to implement the Initiative.”
Guy Poulter Confirmed as NRI Director
22 September 2003
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© University of Greenwich |
Originally an expert in fisheries, Guy has over 25 years experience of working for – and in – developing countries. With a first degree in Food Science from the University of Strathclyde and a PhD in Food Biochemistry from the University of Nottingham, Guy Poulter joined one of NRI’s forerunners, the Tropical Products Institute, in 1976. In the early part of his career he travelled extensively around the world advising poor fisherfolk on the best way to handle, process and preserve their catches, and undertook a two-year assignment in Sri Lanka. He was rapidly promoted, firstly to Head of the Storage Department, concerned with the management of stored grain and other durable food commodities, and then via a range of central administrative posts to the role of Deputy Director for Food Science and Crop Utilization. Taking a career break from NRI in the mid 1990s, Guy was seconded to the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) where he spent three years as a Senior Adviser for Agricultural Research and then a further year working with the European Commission in Brussels. After his return to NRI in 2001, Guy undertook a broad range of senior management tasks in support of substantial changes in the Institute’s marketing and operations, culminating in his appointment as Acting Director in January 2003 and now his confirmation as Director in September 2003. In recent years, Guy’s special professional interest has been in the developmental agricultural research policies of the UK, the European Commission, and the European Union more widely.
Implementation Phase of Semipalatinsk Land Use Project
22 September 2003
NRI land use planner Dr Robert Ridgway is visiting Kazakhstan from 18 September to 2 October to commence the implementation phase of the DFID-funded project “Land Use Plan for the Semipalatinsk Test Site.” Robert is project manager and land use planner, and NRI Associate Nick Hodgson is the project’s GIS expert. The NRI specialists, provided through NR International Ltd, are working with a consortium team led by Mouchel Consulting Ltd with Dr Peter Coughtrey as project director.
The former Soviet nuclear weapons test site near Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan was used for atmospheric and underground tests from 1949, including the former Soviet Union’s first nuclear device in August 1949 and first hydrogen bomb in August 1953. It was formally closed by the President of Kazakhstan in August 1991. During active testing, the site encompassed about 18,000 km² of steppe and supported an infrastructure employing almost 400,000 people. Nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk site profoundly damaged the communities in the region. Even today, people in these communities face a web of hardship that destabilizes their lives.
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© University of Greenwich |
In 1998, the UN General Assembly requested resources for a major programme of rehabilitation – the Semipalatinsk Rehabilitation and Relief Programme. The priorities included the preparation and implementation of a participatory sustainable land use plan for the site, and it was this aspect to which DFID agreed a commitment in 1999 and subsequently commissioned the current project for this purpose. The UK consortium members are teamed with partners from Kazakhstan to work with local populations to understand and reduce the risks associated with the test site.
Robert Ridgway is providing managerial services to all the technical and administrative project activities in Kazakhstan. These involve: radioecology and environmental risk assessment; radiation monitoring techniques and interpretation; land use planning; GIS development and implementation; research and analysis of livelihood systems at village level; training, capacity building and group formation; environmental education and advocacy on rights; water resource management; mineral exploitation impacts and management; review of environmental legislation; and overall project management from offices in Semipalatinsk and Almaty.
As land use planner, Robert will be
involved in: overseeing natural resources data collection
in the test site area for input into a GIS; technical
aspects of land suitability evaluation and participatory
land use planning; and linking these to key national
and local stakeholders. The GIS expert, Nick Hodgson,
will: oversee the installation and functioning of a
GIS facility at the Ministry of Environment offices
in Semipalatinsk; liaise with national consultants in
GIS training and data production to ensure that these
are acceptable and pertinent to the needs of the project;
and provide backstopping support for input of data and
output of information from the GIS for land use planning.
During his current mission, Dr Ridgway will firstly
visit Kurchatov, where the nuclear weapons were manufactured
and where many data on the Test Site are still held,
and will then go to Semipalatinsk for a Project Working
Group meeting, where project partners will finalize
work plans and milestones for all implementation activities.
For further information on the project contact Dr Robert
Ridgway (R.B.Ridgway@gre.ac.uk).
Explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger Dies
31 August 2003
The famed explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger died on 24 August 2003 in hospital at the age of 93. In a lifetime of travelling and exploration in the Middle East and Africa, often willingly enduring hardship and eschewing modern methods of transport, Sir Wilfred took a spartan approach to sharing the austere lives of others. His lasting legacy is his eloquent writing about his travels and his renowned collection of photographs from places and cultures now changed beyond recognition by technological advance. He is most famously known for his crossings by camel of the ‘Empty Quarter’ of Saudi Arabia in the late 1940s in the company of a group of Bedu tribesmen. What is less well known is that these expeditions were sponsored by the Anti-Locust Research Centre (ALRC), one of NRI’s forerunners. The explorer had approached ALRC’s Dr Boris Uvarov (later Sir Boris Uvarov FRS), who provided funding from ALRC for him to map the desert area and particularly to locate the outbreak centres of locust swarms in the region. Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s book on his exploration of the ‘Empty Quarter’ (“Arabian Sands” 1959) is widely regarded as a classic of serious travel writing and as giving an exceptional insight into the lives of the Bedu at that time. Several of Sir Wilfred’s original reports, annotated maps and photographs from these travels are retained in NRI’s Locust Archives at Chatham.
World Technology Award Honour for NRI Consultant
26 June 2003
At the closing ceremony of the World Technology Summit 24-25 June 2003, it was announced that one of the five finalists in the Environment (Individual) section of the World Technology Awards 2003 was one of NRI's consultant researchers, Dr Glyn Vale, for his lifetime achievements in research and development on tsetse control in Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries. Dr Vale has long had collaborative links with NRI's vector management scientists, and for the past three years has been working for NRI in Zimbabwe.
Glyn Vale's research achievements have focused especially on the development of improved tsetse-baiting methods. His initial work, starting in the late 1960s, concentrated on improved trapping methods for assessing the attractiveness of baiting techniques for tsetse. In particular, he developed unobtrusive electrocuting grids that could catch the flies efficiently in the absence of humans. The results from these devices showed that traditional hand-net catches were misleading and that mechanical trapping systems used with artificial baits were highly inefficient. The key outcome of research using the electrocuting devices was the realization that odour attraction was far more important in tsetse baiting than had previously been believed.
Since the mid-1970s, Glyn has worked with other researchers in Africa and Europe to improve 100-fold the cost-effectiveness of artificial baiting of tsetse. The fuller recognition of the feasibility of baiting and the importance of the odour attraction of cattle has led to the development of integrated management based on a combination of artificial baits and selective insecticide-dipping of cattle. From the mid-1980s, the economy, low technology and ecological acceptability of bait-based techniques has meant that they have almost entirely replaced other methods of control throughout Africa. The impact of this is illustrated in North-East Zimbabwe where, for the last 15 years, an invasion barrier of baits has avoided the need for annual spraying of DDT over 10,000 square kilometres. This remarkable beneficial environmental impact of the work of Dr Vale and his co-workers has therefore been recognized by the World Technology Network in announcing him as a Finalist in the Environment section of the World Technology Awards.
Opportunities
to Work with NRI:
EU Framework Contract - Kosovo:
Ruminant Feed Expert
16 June 2003
A Ruminant Feed Expert is required to review the livestock farming systems in minority areas, propose methods of improving production through nutrition and provide training for dairy and beef farmers in the development of their feeding systems as appropriate.
(More information).
FoodAfrica Initiative
2nd Announcement on 5 March
NRI,
in collaboration with the Institut de Recherches Médicinal
et d'Etudes des Plantes Médicinales (IMPM/MINREST) in
Cameroon and the International Foundation for Science
(IFS), is organizing the FoodAfrica initiative, which
is sponsored by the European Union and the IFS.
The focus of the initiative is on improving food systems in sub-Saharan Africa in response to a changing environment. FoodAfrica will:
- review the current research and development activities that affect food systems in sub-Saharan Africa;
- identify gaps in current food and health research strategies;
- recommend future research strategies;
- improve the links between researchers, in particular young scientists, in Africa and Europe.
The FoodAfrica initiative consists of two main activities:
- an Internet-based Forum from 31 March to 11 April 2003, with free participation;
- an International Working Meeting in Cameroon, 5-9 May 2003.
For more information on these activities, and to register for either the Forum or the Working Meeting, visit the FoodAfrica website or e-mail the FoodAfrica Secretariat at foodafrica@nri.org.
Accolade for NRI Author
9 April 2003
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© University of Greenwich |
It has been announced by the Royal Entomological Society that one of NRI's entomologists Dr Stephen Torr and his co-authors from Canada and Zimbabwe have won an award for the best paper published in the Society's journal Medical and Veterinary Entomology in the last two years. Their paper, entitled 'Application of DNA markers to identify the individual specific hosts of tsetse feeding on cattle,' reported the use of DNA fingerprinting to identify which animals within a herd are preferred by tsetse flies.
The research showed that tsetse prefer to feed on older and larger cattle. When given the choice of a young calf or an old ox, for example, every one of the tsetse chose to feed on the ox. It seems that this preference reflects the fact that older cattle are easier and safer for the tsetse to feed on because they are much less likely than younger ones to swipe at the irritation and thus dislodge or even kill the feeding tsetse.
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Photograph
by Dr. Steve Mihok |
The results from this study, combined with findings from related DFID-funded research, have important implications for the control of tsetse-borne trypanosomiasis, a major disease of livestock and humans in Africa. One way to control this disease is to treat cattle with insecticide, which kills tsetse that land on the treated animals. The finding that older cattle are bitten more often than others suggests that insecticide may only need to be applied to these animals. As a result, fewer cattle would need to be treated, which reduces both the cost and the environmental impact. Additionally, if the young cattle are not treated, they will be bitten by ticks that would otherwise be killed by the insecticide: this allows them to develop natural immunity to tick-borne diseases.
The award-winning paper was published in 2001. More recently, Steve Torr and colleagues have used the same DNA fingerprinting technique to study the feeding behaviour of stable flies and malarial mosquitoes in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.
More information on tsetse and trypanosomiasis.
Facing the Challenge of HIV/AIDS in Africa
March 2003
An NRI report "Facing the Challenge: NGO Experiences of Mitigating the Impacts of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa" has been published on-line. The report, edited by NRI Associate Joanna White, presents nine case studies of NGO initiatives in the region (five in Uganda, two in Tanzania, one in Zimbabwe and one in Lesotho) and gives an overview of their significance.
Since the late 1980s, the presence of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa has increased, and its effects on adults in their prime years and on their dependants has become ever more evident. It has been estimated that 3.5 million new infections occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2001, bringing the total number of people infected in this region to 28.5 million.
Most donor funding in response to the epidemic has been focused on preventive and curative health programmes and on behaviour change. Less attention has been paid to the social and economic impacts, in spite of the known relationship between HIV/AIDS, poverty and vulnerability. Many of these impacts have long-term, even irreversible, effects on local livelihood systems.
AIDS-affected communities and NGOs have been responding to such impacts with innovative local projects to tackle the devastating effects on families and communities. However, these projects have not been widely reported. NRI therefore conducted a series of structured case studies of nine such projects in order to facilitate exchange of information between development practitioners, and to draw out and share lessons for the future. As well as describing these case studies, the report identifies 'best practice' future interventions, suggests potential procedures for the replication of successful approaches, and recommends greater sharing of information and experience between practitioners and between countries.
A copy of the report in PDF format (219kb) can be downloaded here.
New Publication
on Performance and Impact
NRI has published a new book:
'Institutionalizing Impact Orientation' (publication
details). The book, by NRI staff experienced in
monitoring and evaluation, documents the process, results
and lessons from a project that introduced performance
management concepts, and built performance management
capacity, in a group of agricultural research organizations
(more about NRI's
work on Performance and Impact).
New Head for NRI
1 January 2003
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© University of Greenwich |
With a first degree in Food Science from the University of Strathclyde and a PhD in Food Biochemistry from the University of Nottingham, Guy Poulter joined one of NRI's forerunners, the Tropical Products Institute, in 1976. In the early part of his career he travelled extensively around the world advising poor fisherfolk on the best way to handle, process and preserve their catches, and undertook a two-year assignment in Sri Lanka. He was rapidly promoted, firstly to Head of the Storage Department, concerned with the management of stored grain and other durable food commodities, and then via a range of central administrative posts to the role of Deputy Director for Food Science and Crop Utilization. Taking a career break from NRI in the mid 1990s, Guy was seconded to the UK Government's Department for International Development (DFID) where he spent three years as a Senior Adviser for Agricultural Research and then a further year working with the European Commission in Brussels. Since his return to NRI in 2001, Guy has undertaken a broad range of senior management tasks in support of substantial changes in the Institute's marketing and operations. In recent years, Guy's special professional interest has been in the developmental agricultural research policies of the UK, the European Commission, and the European Union more widely.
"After a career of over twenty five years at NRI, I am honoured to be asked to lead the Institute at this key stage in its development," says Guy Poulter. "NRI has been a significant national and global player in helping to combat poverty for more than a century - it's up there with the very best in the world. The contribution of the NRI staff brings respect and kudos to the University and to the Medway Region, and we will do all we can to continue to work to make a difference to the lives of some of the poorest people on earth."
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, Professor Rick Trainor, says: "Guy Poulter combines an excellent professional track record with strong management skills. He has the ability and the vision to lead NRI into a stable and successful future."
Project
Workshop on Street Foods in Ghana
On 4-5 March in Accra, NRI
and the Ghanaian Food Research Institute organized a
participatory workshop at the inception of a new research
project on the safety of street foods in Ghana. The
meeting brought together the coalition research partners
and other stakeholders to discuss project objectives
and agree strategies to achieve the research outputs.
(Research
on street foods in Africa)
Further Information
Dr. Guy Poulter
Email: R.G.Poulter@gre.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)1634 883226
Fax: +44 (0)1634 883386
