Drying it right
With solar dryers, farmers can avoid postharvest losses, add value to their vegetable crops, and provide consumers with nutritious food that can be stored and consumed throughout the year.
With solar dryers, farmers can avoid postharvest losses, add value to their vegetable crops, and provide consumers with nutritious food that can be stored and consumed throughout the year.
Rotten onions stink, and in the past any Indian farmer who kept his crop for months after harvest was all too familiar with the smell. But thanks to a WorldVeg project in the eastern state of Odisha, India, farmers who keep their onions now experience the sweet smell of success and the promise of much higher incomes.
In Manyara, Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Tanga regions of Tanzania, WorldVeg is working with local communities to build family solar dryers for vegetables. The work, supported by the Amsterdam Initiative Against Malnutrition (AIM), provides people with the means to process vegetables for later use—and to explore the production of new food products to extend the vegetable value chain.
Results indicate that tomato production is being done by relatively young married individuals who have at least primary level education. More than 16% of respondents encounter produce losses due to high incidence of diseases, insect pest and mechanical injuries, each of them accounting for more than 20% of postharvest losses.
On 21 March 2017, Postharvest Specialist Roseline Marealle travelled to Kigali, Rwanda to participate in a workshop on “Postharvest Technologies for Perishable Crops” for a small group of young horticultural professionals. During the event she received the Kader Award from the Postharvest Education Foundation (PEF) in recognition for her outstanding effort in providing education to local farmers, traders, processors and marketers and helping them to reduce food losses. Lisa Kitinoja, PEF founder, presented the award.
A recent action learning exercise to develop a successful packhouse led by WorldVeg in Bangladesh gained national recognition but revealed the complex set of skills and interventions needed to make it sustainable. -- MORE --
Short growing seasons limit the availability of vegetables in many locations in Africa and Asia. The World Vegetable Center is tackling this problem by promoting consumption of dried vegetables when fresh vegetables are in short supply. --MORE--
Exports of cabbage, cauliflower and other vegetables from Jessore, Bangladesh are increasing as farmers use improved postharvest handling methods to protect the quality and freshness of their produce.
Through the USAID Postharvest Project, farmers in Bangladesh have learned simple but effective methods to protect their vegetables after the harvest to retain quality and ensure more of the crop is available to consumers.
WorldVeg Eastern and Southern Africa Postharvest Research Associate/Nutritionist Roseline Marealle recently received the 2016 Kader Award for Postharvest Training from the Postharvest Education Foundation. The foundation presents the award to an outstanding graduate e-learner or a team of e-learners after the successful completion of a year of training on commodity systems assessment, small-scale postharvest handling practices, postharvest demonstration design, postharvest training program design, and cost/benefit analysis. -- MORE --