- Author: Mike Hsu
Atef Swelam begins as director of Kearney and West Side Research and Extension Centers
In the fields around the Egyptian city of Minya Al-Qamh, “port of wheat” in Arabic, a boy rubbed his eyes wearily as he helped his father irrigate their crops at 2 a.m. – when they could access the scarce water that reached their farm, located at the tail end of the canal. The family, which had been farming the land around the village of Sharqia for many generations, barely had enough water to sustain their wheat and vegetables.
Swatting in the darkness at the incessantly biting mosquitoes, a young Atef Swelam made a vow.
“I said: ‘I will do my best to not let anyone suffer like I have suffered, like my father suffered – I will help to improve the lives of others,'” recalled Swelam, who went on to become an irrigation engineer improving water-use efficiency.
During the World Food Forum (Oct. 16-20), Swelam was recognized by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization as a “Water and Food Hero” for developing irrigation techniques that save water and boost yields across the Nile Delta and beyond.
Swelam started on Aug. 10 as director of both the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier and the West Side REC in Five Points. Both facilities are part of a network of centers operated by University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.
“Our organization, and more importantly the communities we serve in the Central Valley and across California, are so fortunate that Atef has joined our team,” said Brent Hales, UC ANR associate vice president for research and Cooperative Extension. “He brings not only a record of truly impactful research and innovation but a genuine passion for learning the needs of people, working with them and developing collaborative, science-based solutions.”
Making a difference in the lives of people
After earning his master's degree in land and water management from the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari in Italy, Swelam returned to Egypt for his Ph.D. in agricultural engineering at Zagazig University. There, he advanced to become a professor of irrigation and drainage engineering in 2019; he was also a senior scientist and research team leader with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (CGIAR-ICARDA). Most recently, Swelam was the agricultural research officer of the U.N.-FAO's Office of Innovation in Rome.
Swelam explained that the mandate, function, mission and vision of UC ANR's research and extension network – and its strong reputation for making an impact through co-creation with clientele – attracted him to this position in California.
“I'm always looking to make a difference on the ground and in the lives of people,” he said. “If you look at the locations where all RECs are located, they are inside the communities themselves, and in the heart of the farming system.”
Swinging between Kearney and West Side RECs, Swelam said he feels he works in an empowering environment, created and supported by the leadership as well as by the staff at both centers – “a dynamic is which hard to find elsewhere.”
Darren Haver, recently named director of the statewide system of RECs, said he will work with Swelam to explore ways to secure the resources that the Kearney and West Side teams need.
“Atef brings a wealth of experience in conducting research as well as working to elevate and amplify the research and outreach of others,” said Haver, formerly the director of South Coast REC in Irvine. “He clearly is committed to making a difference locally, nationally and globally and we are excited to support him as his vision for these two RECs evolves.”
Being a farmer and a scientist, Swelam feels he is on the same wavelength with both of the RECs' clientele groups – researchers and growers. In his first months on the job, Swelam said he will get to know the needs of the grower community and the researchers at the RECs.
“What I like most about this job is that the REC system, with its research for development approach, supports the scientists, who are in turn supporting the farmers and communities that are on the front line in achieving food and nutrition security,” he explained.
When tailoring solutions to meet local conditions, Swelam added that it's essential that community members are involved so they feel a sense of ownership and are committed to sustaining its impact beyond the time limits of a research or extension project.
Innovative irrigation technique used worldwide
A prominent example of Swelam's community-based work is his long-term mechanized raised-bed (MRB) irrigation program, the technology for which he has garnered numerous international honors.
While he was a researcher at the CGIAR-ICARDA, Swelam led several projects between 2010 and 2020 to study new soil and water practices at farm level. Through a project at his home village, he developed a cost-effective, small-scale machine to enable growing wheat on raised beds. This was in contrast to flat flooded land – the traditional, labor- and resource-intensive method that produced irrigation inefficiencies and caused shortages for downstream farmers like his father, Haj Ibrahim.
With MRB, precisely placed trenches between the raised beds would hold exactly the amount of water the adjacent crops need and thus leave more water for all. And while the technique seemed promising, Swelam had to convince skeptical farmers to adopt the practices – including his neighbors and his own father.
“He was very resistant to me in the beginning, because this was the first time ever in Egypt using raised beds for wheat cultivation…he even tried to convince people not to follow me,” Swelam said, with a chuckle.
So father and son divided their fields, with one half planted and irrigated using traditional methods, and the other using the raised-bed approach. Gradually, as MRB began to prove its worth, Haj Ibrahim warmed to the technology and became an active collaborator on the research – even helping the scientist when he was puzzled by experiment results.
“My father was my mobile library,” Swelam said. “He was illiterate – he had never been in a school – but his thinking and knowledge about the real agriculture and farming system were much better than those of a professor like me!”
After the initial research trials produced successes in his village and the larger governorate (a political division within Egypt), the technique was replicated in other governorates across the country – which then attracted the attention of other nations and international organizations.
Overall, Swelam said, the technology helped the growers reduce applied water by 25% and cut farming costs by 25%, while boosting fertilizer use efficiency by 30% and increasing yield by 25%.
Today, MRB is applied by more than 2 million farmers in the Middle East and North Africa to a variety of crops and is recognized as a good agricultural practice by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
“The biggest recognition and reward for me out of this impactful innovation is seeing the smiles on the faces of farmers,” Swelam said.
Spreading best practices across San Joaquin Valley and beyond
Swelam said he hopes to see similarly positive results for farmers here in California with a wide range of innovations. He and other researchers at Kearney and West Side RECs will continue to make sure that the science and knowledge generated at the centers reach farmers. He added that partnering with local growers to optimize their on-farm practices is crucial on a host of issues, from pest management to water conservation.
“Whatever we do to improve supply management at system level, if the water is not used efficiently at farm level, then we lose everything we had achieved at that macro level,” he explained.
Swelam added that investing intensive time and effort in developing practical, cost-effective solutions will pay off in the long run as they become naturally adopted across the grower community.
“Farmers are very clever and skilled with their farming systems,” he said. “When they see or get benefits from something, they promote it among themselves.”
Swelam's father was one example. After leading the resistance against mechanized raised beds initially, he eventually became its most vocal proponent.
“He became the biggest promoter for this technology; he even promoted it on local and international TV and radio programs,” Swelam said. “I was proud of my father.”
Haj Ibrahim died in 2017 and Swelam continues to pay tribute to his father through his life's work on research and extension – inspired by their long struggles to bring water to their crops, and the shared triumph of their new techniques.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
The grant, “Food Quality in Egypt: Screening for Contamination with Pesticides using Innovative VHH Antibody-Based Assays and Biosensors,” was one of 15 collaborative projects selected for funding by the U.S.-Egypt Science and Technology Joint Board. The grants foster research collaboration between Egyptian and U.S. scientists.
“Zagazig is one of the world's premier agricultural institutions,” said Hammock, a distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. “I am thrilled to have this support to expand our long collaboration with Zagazig. This is very practical work with potentially profound outcomes on reducing exposure of consumers and workers to pesticides. We are using a very sophisticated new antibody technology to allow on site monitoring of potentially dangerous pesticides.”
“Our postdoctoral scientist Natalia Vasylieva is the star on the project,” Hammock said, “but it encompasses our entire immunoassay group. We have a long-term collaboration with Zagazig University.”
The grants are funded by the National Academies of Sciences, and the Egyptian Science and Technology Development Fund. Reviewers evaluated the proposals' scientific and technical merit, relevance to program objectives, capabilities of partner institutions and individuals, nature of collaboration, and cost-effectiveness. The board funded less than 12 percent of the eligible proposals.
“Immunoassay (ELISA) is an alternative and complimentary analytical method to instrumental techniques like liquid or gas chromatography,” said Vasylieva, who leads the immunoassay group in the Hammock lab. A native of the Ukraine, she received her master's degree from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine, and her doctorate from National Institute of Applied Sciences in France. Joining the Hammock lab in May 2013, she focuses her research on development of nanobodies as neutralizing agents for small molecule poisoning, as well as use of nanobodies as therapeutics.
“ELISA is also considered cheaper method,” said Vasylieva. “Particularly, ELISA is economically interesting when relatively large set of samples have to be analyzed. This is usually the case in the environmental monitoring for contamination and human exposure studies.”
The Hammock lab, which has extensive experience in development of immunoassays, extends the field by developing new formats of the immunoassays by developing new reagents. “In particular, we develop new type of antibodies, called nanobodies or VHH (from variable heavy domain from heavy chain only antibodies) that naturally occur in camelids and sharks,” Vasylieva said. “These antibodies have all the affinity properties of conventional (polyclonal and monoclonal) antibodies, but also have unique properties, like small size (1/10th of the size of conventional antibodies), high thermal stability, resilience to organic solvents and high refolding capacity. These properties make them particularly suitable for use in portable devices for environmental and human exposure monitoring.”
A large amount of pesticide is used in Egypt,” she said. “So far, only limited amount of information is available about environmental contamination and human exposure to those pesticides. In these few publications available, levels of pesticide in the food appears to be over the allowed limits.”
In their abstract, the researchers explained that long-term application of pesticides has resulted in contamination of food in Egypt. “Continuous exposure to pesticides is usually associated with infertility, birth defects, endocrine disruption, neurological disorders and cancer in humans. Worldwide reliance on chemical pesticides in agriculture remains an essential component for high food production. According to the Egyptian Agricultural Pesticide Committee, the amount of pesticides imported and used for agricultural production has more than doubled from 2005 to 2012. However, only a few studies have been published on this subject over the past 10 years and they show high levels of pesticides in a variety of food products.”
“Food monitoring studies in Egypt have been primarily limited to analysis of organochlorides, organophosphates, and carbamate insecticides,” the researchers noted in their abstract. “Research and monitoring of other pesticide groups is a relatively new subject, and a knowledge gap still remains. With this study, we propose to assess the safety of food available on the Egyptian market and develop tools for fast and low-cost contamination screening. Our long-term goal is to contribute to a healthier Egypt by raising awareness about food chemical safety and to provide simple tools for researchers and stakeholders to screen the food products for compliance with regulatory policies. We hypothesize that human exposure to toxic chemicals through contaminated food (domestic and imported) has increased due to excessive application of pesticides in order to face nutrition needs.”
They defined three specific goals of the project:
- To screen Egyptian domestic and imported food samples for pyrethroid insecticide residues, a major group of insecticides used today, using immunoassays;
- To develop new reagents and immunoassays for detecting diamide insecticides, a group of pesticides whose use is rapidly growing, and
- To develop tools for fast and low-cost food contamination screening in the environment with minimal technical support.
Overall, the scientists aim to develop innovative immunoassays and biosensors empowering scientists and engaged Egyptian communities to collect analytical data to address environmental chemical concerns. “We will do this by adapting and refining technologies to improve assay performance, reliability and field portability,” they wrote. “The knowledge gained from this research will provide insight into human exposure to agricultural pesticides in Egypt and will raise the Egyptian population's awareness of food quality.”
Hammock, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors, directs two major UC Davis programs; the Superfund Program financed by the National Institute of Environmental Health's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH-NIEHS); and the NIH Biotechnology Training Program. Hammock, who holds a doctorate in entomology/toxicology from UC Berkeley, served as a public health medical officer at the U.S. Army Academy of Health Science in San Antonio, Texas; a postdoctorate fellow in entomology/toxicology at UC Berkeley; and a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry with the Rockefeller Foundation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., before joining the UC Davis faculty in 1980.