- Author: Mary E. Reed
The goal of the scholarship opportunity, funded primarily by a trust created by Leonard and Marseille Morris, is to provide an individual from a developing country the opportunity to learn about managing the postharvest handling of horticultural crops with an intent to take that information back to their home country and utilize it to benefit others in their region.
The UC Cooperative Extension Specialists who reviewed the applications had nearly three times the number of applications to review as the previous year. Extensive time and care was taken to carefully review the 140 applications submitted online for the scholarship.
Chiamaka was very excited to be selected for this scholarship opportunity, stating, "I am looking foward to having an expert training on postharvest handling of horticultural crops and I am also excited about the field trip. As an M.SC student I have not really had a practical training on postharvest handling of horticultural crops. I am also looking forward to meeting my fellow researchers on postharvest technology. I am just very excited and I can't wait for June. The most interesting part is that June 16th is my birthday."
The scholarship includes enrollment, course materials, lodging while attending the course, transportation from the airport, and a per diem for food not included in the course. Ms. Nwammadu will obtain additional scholarships to assist her with personal expenses as well as travel to the United States from Nigeria.
- Author: Mary E. Reed
After an intensive review of the more than fifty applications received, Hussein Yunus Alhassan from Ghana was selected. The following is his report:
The Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops Short Course (PTHSC), 2013 has been the greatest milestone in my study of postharvest technology of horticultural crops.
I therefore wish to take this opportunity to thank the organizers, donors and sponsors of the 2013 PTHSC scholarship award committee, for giving me this singular honor to be part of the 2013 short course. Their efforts and contributions shall not be in vain, for I shall endeavor to use the knowledge gained to improve on my academic and research capacities and thus help improve the technical and academic knowledge of many future post harvest technology students at Tamale Polytechnic as well as the technical knowledge of many rural horticultural farmers within our communities.
The course offered me the opportunity and ability to relate and interact with various personalities and groups of varied socio-cultural, academic and research background as well as a consortium of industry players and thus, enable me have a wider understanding of global technological perspectives of post harvest technologies of horticultural crops.
The knowledge gained from the lectures, field trips and these interactions has widened my conceptualization and strategic thinking about post harvest technology development. It shall have an impact on:
- Delivery and content of lectures as well as during training sessions
- Improvements in research methodologies for quality determination and enhancement
- Enhanced outreach activities by both students and colleague lecturers to our communities (especially during our community postharvest technology needs assessment).
By and large the 2013 Post Harvest Technology Short Course was a huge success and I do hope to have the chance or opportunity to attend future short courses to be able to build a strong foundation of knowledge of postharvest technology of horticultural crops that will enable me to contribute positively to horticultural agricultural development in my country, Ghana.
In conclusion I wish to state that my whole trip to USA for the course was a real lifetime experience that I shall never forget.
- My most enjoyable moments were; (i) with my found friends Salesh Kumar, Petro and Christopher, they always made me happy. (ii) The meals that were provided during the first week of the course. (iii) Travelling along the countryside during the second week.
- The hardest things for me were following the lectures on fruit ripening, flavor and aroma and post harvest disease management, since they were new areas for me grasp.
- My most interesting experience was the demonstrations on fruit quality measurements and food safety regulations. Secondly the visits to the various industries e.g. paramount citrus.
- Emphatically there was a lot that I have learned that will go a long way in my teaching career e.g. storage, temperature and quality control. It has also given ideas and a lot of information in getting a topic for my Post graduate studies this year.
Hussein Yunus Alhassan
Tamale Polytechnic
Ghana
- Author: Diane Nelson
These questions and many, many more will be answered during the 35th Annual Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops Short Course at UC Davis June 17-28, an intensive two-week study of the biology and latest technologies for handling fruits, nuts, vegetables and ornamentals in California.
“It’s a very valuable course,” said Mohit Bansal, food technologist with Earthbound Farms Organic in San Juan Bautista who attended the short course two years ago. “It provides an excellent overview of everything you need to know about postharvest technology, taught by leading experts in the field.”
The first week of the course features lectures, discussions and hands-on laboratory sessions on topics like harvesting systems; cooling, storing and transport methods; safety factors; ethylene; energy use; and virtually everything research, extension, quality control, business, academic and governmental professionals need to know.
For the optional second week, participants fields, packing houses, cooling and storage facilities, produce distribution centers, and transportation centers throughout California, home to some 400 different commodities.
“It’s a wonderful tour,” Bansal said. “It’s great to see the best postharvest procedures in action.”
The course is led by a team of experts, including Elizabeth Mitcham, director of the UC Davis Postharvest Technology Center. Bansal says networking with the experts, and fellow participants, helped advance his career.
“It’s invaluable to meet with professors and others in the industry,” Bansal said. “I’m now working on a research project with Marita Cantwell, a Cooperative Extension vegetable specialist at UC Davis, who I met at the Postharvest Technology Short Course two years ago.”
The enrollment fee for the first week is $1895, which includes all classroom instruction, lab activities, course materials, morning and afternoon coffee breaks, lunches Monday through Friday and one barbeque dinner. Enrollment for both weeks is $2895, which includes all week-one activities, plus field tour transportation and continental breakfasts Monday through Friday during the tour.
Enrollment is limited. For details and to register, go to http://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/Education/PTShortCourse/
Media contact:
- Diane Nelson, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, (530) 752-1969, denelson@ucdavis.edu
- Beth Mitcham, Director, Postharvest Technology Center (530) 752-7512, ejmitcham@ucdavis.edu
- Author: Mary E. Reed
It was a painstaking process to winnow through all the applications and select just one individual that we thought would best be able to implement the stated goal of taking the information learned back to their home country and sharing and utilizing that information to make improvements in the local and regional postharvest handling systems. We selected Mekbib Hilegebrile Seife, a Post Harvest Technology Researcher with the Semera Rural Technology Research Center in Ethiopia.
We enjoyed the opportunity to get to know Mekbib during his June 17-29, 2012 visit to California. He wrote the following report for us upon his return to Ethiopia:
I was very happy and pleased during the time that I spent with all of the UC Davis people for those two weeks, those weeks were the happiest weeks in my life. I feel it from the deep part of my heart! You did a wonderful thing for me in my life! Thank you very much!
I wish for all UC Davis people long life and great success!
What did you enjoy the most?
Firstly, I was very admiring of UC Davis. It is an ideal place for academic growth, and pleasant for life. The city was calm, beautiful, ever-green, friendly for bicycles and also included very nice, peaceful and cooperative peoples. Secondly, I felt great pleasure and proud to be there on two weeks with other people who have done a lot of wonderful jobs and have placed their finger-print on the changes occuring in this fast and dynamic globe, with their two hands and out-of-border thinking minds.
The first week of the course was so fantastic; the program presentations were clear, concise, self-explanatory, practical, and systematic. All the materials were well supported by well-prepared documents, best research practice, current and updated information, references, manuals, photos and illustrations, which will make recall easier for me, and my future career more successful. There was free, frank, open and hot discussion between the scientists and the participants. In addition, the demonstrations of cooling methods and instruments for monitoring different parameters; quality and sensory evaluation; and also post-harvest diseases and diseases control tools were so impressive. They all gave me practical and fundamental post-harvest technology knowledge and a wide variety of information on horticulture crops.
What was your most interesting experience?
The second week was an incredible long field trip; it included all the food pipe line (Growers, Shippers, Marketers, Carriers, Distributors, Retailers and Processors). I visited more than 25 different organizations. It was enjoyable, impressive, and beneficial in terms of the transfer of a wide variety of technologies and knowledge that will be helpful to me in my home country.
I also got to meet a wide variety of people that came from different continents of the world, all in one hall at UC-Davis. I gained a wide variety of experience, knowledge and information. It was an interesting experience and a great opportunity, where I learned many things from many people.
Was there something specific you learned that you think will be helpful to you in your work?
The two weeks of training helped me by updating the current post harvest handling of horticulture crops and best practices. This area is a very big challenge in the growth of my country's productivity. I also increased my skills, devotion and commitment to transfer this new information to researchers, experts, extension workers and my people to utilize and benefit from the current knowledge. In general, the training was a life changing asset that I will always remember easily and which will help me throughout my life.
I would like to extend my deepest thanks to everyone at UC Davis, the Leonard and Marseille Morris Trust, the Postharvest Technology Center and Postharvest Education Foundation for their generosity and kind spirit for an individual from developing country, to advance postharvest handling education that is the bottle neck of the development and growth of a developing country's productivity.
- Author: Mary E. Reed
Beth Mitcham, Director of the Postharvest Technology Center said, “We were impressed by the attentiveness of the audience despite the language challenges and 10-hours a day in class. They were very appreciative of the opportunity to learn from us information that had seemed inaccessible to them in the past.”
Michael Reid agreed, saying, “We had lots of good questions and comments. Based on our 'snapshot of the country and the industry' there's a lot of room for improvement in postharvest handling of horticultural crops. There is obvious potential for increasing product diversity and import replacement as well as for exporting high value horticultural crops to the EU and to Russia, if the postharvest handling systems can be put in place. Following the course I had the opportunity to travel to Dubrovnik and saw quite a bit of greenhouse production of salad vegetables and field production of citrus and other crops on the coastal plain."
It was assumed initially that interest in this postharvest training opportunity would be modest, but as word got around of this unique opportunity, registrations greatly exceeded initial expectations. Interest in the training was so intense that radio and television crews conducted interviews with the instructors. Participants represented the countries of Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia, and Ukraine.