SUNDAY 3RD APRIL, 2016 – UWI TODAY
5
The Faculty of Food and Agriculture
at The UWI St.
Augustine in partnership with Repsol recently launched
its first Agricultural Innovation competition for secondary
schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago. The competition
is part of the Agriculture Demonstration of Practices and
Technologies (ADOPT) Project, funded by The UWI-
Trinidad and Tobago Research and Development Impact
(RDI) Fund. The project encourages the development of
innovative technologies to address agricultural challenges
within food systems. The formal launch took place on
February 23 at the St. Augustine Campus.
The aim of the competition is twofold – to promote
and strengthen secondary education in Agriscience and
forge links with secondary and university programmes at
the Faculty of Food and Agriculture. The Faculty – which
comprises the Department of Agricultural Economics and
Extension, Department of Food Production, Department
of Geography and the Business Development Unit – offers
a range of programmes at the certificate, undergraduate
and postgraduate level. The hope is that the competition
will encourage more young Trinbagonians to pursue the
Faculty’s programmes.
The ADOPT Project looks at improving the
sustainability of the Protected Agriculture Industry
through increasing the contribution of protected agriculture
produce to food security goals. One of its goals is to
implement non-traditional systems for small-scale
farming, aimed at strengthening local food security and
adapting traditional open field farming methods in the
face of variations in climate. The project blends Protected
Agriculture shade house technology with a combination
of alternative agricultural methods like hydroponics,
organoponics, hybridponics, aquaponics, peeponics,
aeroponics, vermiponics and barrel-ponics growing systems
and LED light technology for sustainable food production
using low-cost or recyclable materials.
There are 3 phases in the competition: In Phase I,
interested schools will send their letter of interest and
proposal of their innovative ideas to address food security
using the competition guidelines. Fifty schools will then be
short-listed as part of Phase II and asked to submit drawings
of their design and a budget. Finally, Phase III will see ten
schools further short-listed and asked to build a table-top
prototype of their proposed design.
Student-teams in Forms 2 to 5 are invited to participate
in the competition which runs till June 2016. Interested
schools can contact the Department of Food Production
via email at
adopt.uwirdi.
or call 662-2002 ext. 82090 or 84055
for further information.
CAMPUS NEWS
AGRICULTURAL INNOVATION COMPETITION
Cross-section of attendees at the ADOPT competition launch (secondary school students and teachers, ADOPT team members and faculty and staff of the Faulty of Food and Agriculture).
Dr. Isaac Bekele, Dean, Faculty of Food and Agriculture with Mrs.
June Austin-Pinder, Science Teacher from Holy Faith Convent,
Penal and two form 3 students – Catherine Chandler and Samantha
Ramkumar.
