Department of Plant Science

This episode of Shamba Shape Up features the Zero Energy Brick Cooler (ZEBC), one of the technologies installed at the newly established 'Innovative Cold Storage Technologies: Research, Training and Demonstration Unit' at the field station of the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences. This unit has been established with support from the National Research Fund (NRF-Kenya).

As a department our students are holding online learning and this has also stretched out to the postgraduate students who have their thesis ready for defence. Therefore the students who have completed their corrections should forward their names, title of the thesis and supervisors names to be scheduled for an online defence. Get in touch with the Dean's office Faculty of Agriculture online. This will enable the department to plan for the upcoming graduation in September. 

Prof. Florence Olubayo with her collaborators Prof. Robyn McConchie and Ms. Emma Walters from the University of Sydney, have been running a capacity building program on ‘increasing the development impact of Agricultural Research’ for mid-career Agricultural personnel in the African continent here in Kenya since 2015.

The six week training course was officially opened by the Deputy High Commissioner of Australia to Kenya Mr. Jonathan Ball who encouraged participants to make use of the training to understand their research environment and the role they play in agricultural research activities in their respective countries. He reiterated that multidisciplinary research is important for achieving food and nutrition security in Africa and the Australian government will continue to train and support experts in agricultural innovations and technologies relevant for agricultural production and supply.

The Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection successfully hosted the Melia Project workshop.  The workshop is one of the programmes under the VLIR Team initiative “Synergy for mass propagation of elite Melia volkensii clones and exploiting its derived bio-pesticides”.