While Krishna Bhattarai worked with farmers in a Ugandan town in May, he noticed nobody ate lunch.
The 30-year-old UF environmental horticulture doctoral student was one of 10 UF students chosen to participate in international agricultural research projects to help farmers improve food production, he said.
“I asked them, ‘What do you eat for lunch?’ and they told me they don’t,” Bhattarai said. “That was something that intrigued me.”
The Trellis Fund is a program that connects U.S. graduate students from UF, North Carolina State University, University of Hawaii at Manoa and University of California, Davis, to organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, said Brenda Dawson, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture at UC Davis communications coordinator. A total of 16 students were sent this year.
Food insecurity is a major issue for the mushroom and tomato farmers in Kira Town, Uganda, he said. Most people only eat two meals a day, so he wanted to help for the 12 days he was there in May.
Bhattarai, a tomato breeding expert, taught farmers the importance of drip irrigation, how to make tomatoes last longer and how to test soil for diseases, he said.
“Even though I came with a background in tomato breeding, I also learned a lot,” Bhattarai said.
Dawson said the response from UF students was incredible. The program builds partnerships between students, like Bhattarai, and organizations to continue to working together, Dawson said.
“They’re tomorrow’s agricultural researchers,” she said.
