Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST, Ghana)

The KNUST team is a multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Joseph Akowuah. As part of the Consortium the team focuses its research on developing innovative solutions to address FLW in three key crops (maize, cassava, tomato) that in Ghana are predominantly produced by smallholder farmers. In line with the Consortium agenda of “building the academic and entrepreneurial capacity of the next generation” more than 15 postgraduate students received support to conduct research activities on various technologies, practices, and interventions that seek to address FLW along the value chains of the three crops. In partnership with the private sector, over 1000 smallholder farmers have received training on small capacity drying systems, hermetic storage technologies, and mechanised harvesting interventions for maize and cassava to reduce postharvest loss and food waste at the smallholder level in Ghana.

University of Nairobi (Kenya)

The University of Nairobi Postharvest Research Team is a multidisciplinary team led by Prof. Jane Ambuko. The team is involved in basic and applied research focusing on innovative solutions for FLW reduction in fruits and vegetables. After years of adaptive research in cold storage technologies and small-scale processing technologies the team is now engaged in scaling up through the ‘hub and spoke’ approach. The team works with smallholder farmers who are organized in groups to introduce simple cooling technologies. The technologies have helped farmers to aggregate their produce and negotiate better prices from traders. The target groups have also been introduced to simple wet and dry processing technologies for fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. Local processing facilities help farmers transform unsold perishable produce into shelf-stable products thereby minimizing postharvest losses while earning better returns. The University of Nairobi serves as a hub for research and capacity building and support the spokes. The spokes include practitioners in the food sector – farmers/farmer groups, traders, processors, extension agents and others.

Zamorano University (Honduras)

The Zamorano University team is led by Prof. Jesus Orozco. The team focuses on utilizing Black Soldier Fly (BSF, Hermetia illucens) to convert food and animal waste into high protein human food. Honduras is one of the five Latin-American countries with the highest malnutrition rate in Latin America. In some rural towns, more than half of the children from 6-60 months are below the height for their age and about a third are underweight. Access to affordable protein is frequently the biggest reason. Insect protein incorporated in the diet of farm animals (especially poultry) can help to alleviate this problem. BSF is a native insect that the team rears on food and animal waste. The high protein larvae is used to feed poultry, saving money on animal feed proteins such as imported soybean meal. Eggs and meat allow smallholder farmers to produce more animal-source protein for the human diet. BSF larvae are a powerful decomposer of food and animal waste helping with the reduction of contaminants and vectors of several diseases. Additionally, the decomposition process by larvae results in high nitrogen fertilizer that smallholder farers can use in crop production.