On his reactions to the Tropentag, Jack Heinemann, Professor for Genetics and Gene Ecology at the University of Canterbury, NZ, and author of the book “Hope not Hype: The Future of Agriculture”, commented that this event gives a legacy to the milestone report “International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development” known as IAASTD. This international documents is in danger of being forgotten. When different stakeholders discuss and reflect on the report it helps to keep the message into the head, and keep pressures on the policy makers. Read summaries of the presentation and discussion on the report on our blog post, Final Address: Agriculture at the Crossroads or missing K,

All the keynotes are now accessible as video streams at the ETH Multimedia Portal. Be sure to check it out!

After three days of intense debates, the Tropentag did not arrive at a final destination but at a road sign pointing in several directions. Figuratively speaking, Jack Heinemann, Professor for Genetics and Gene Ecology at the University of Canterbury, NZ, and author of the book “Hope not Hype: The Future of Agriculture”, had pulled the road sign out of the ground and was waving it in front of the audience that had gathered for a last time in the Scherrer Auditorium of ETH Zurich. Mr. Heinemann spoke about the findings and opportunities envisioned by the IAASTD report to which he contributed as co-author. Jack Heinemann presenting the IAASTD

Blogging, tweeting, flickring, facebooking, youtubeing, photographing, videoing, interviewing… Four days, 54 blog entries, 300 pictures (approx. 3000 raw pictures equaling to 10 GB of hard-disk space), 7300 page views, 4500 unique page views, 905 absolute unique blog visitors at a bounce rate of 30%... The Student Reporters washed their post-Tropentag-2010 depression down with a few liters of beer, overlooking the Uetliberg and the city of Zurich. We would like to thank all the participants for the cheers, the smiles, the good moods and the hopeful vibes you gave to our reports. From our side, we hope that we helped you to make your meaningful work known to those that didn’t have the chance to attend this year’s conference. We worked hard during the last three days. This is what we are expecting from you too. You are the ones that have to take care of the future. And for this, we wish you, well... GOOD LUCK! We do hope that the Tropentag Student Reporter is here to stay as an institution. We are proud to be the first ones! Take good care of yourselves and see you in Tropentag 2011 in Bonn. This blog is now yours! Keep it going, keep it awake and keep it real! Prost to you all! Oral Beer Session I

Simon Cook, Challenge programme on water and food talks on how water crises affect development. He considers four major nested crises which inlcude water scarcity, vulnerability with related to hazards, lack of sharing of information, resources and distribution of benefits and water productivity . These problems can only be solved through multidisciplinary or transdisciplinar approach, and Tropentag contributes importantly to the existing knowledge of water and development. Watch and listen to his conclusive comments

A diverse range of projects from all over the world highlighted the importance of transdisciplinary approaches addressing challenges related to the concept of the World Food System. Melvin Lippe from the Leibnitz University Hanover presented the recent progress in his research he conducts in the Wayanad District in India. To be able to handle the many different forces affecting the land- as well as resource-use decissions seem to present the main challenge to cope with. Another approach was pursuid by Chinwe Ifejika Speranza from the German Development Institute. She investigated the ability of the agriculture in Kenya to cope with climate change. Chinwe Ifejika Speranza outlined the different components of resilience of rural systems that are self-organization, learning capacity and buffer capacity with a special focus on self-organization. It was a pleasure then to follow what Holger Hindorf from the university of Bonn presented his efforts aiming to conserve forest harbouring the last wild coffee trees in Ethiopia. The audience was not only explained the real origin of the words "coffee" and "bean" respectively but also that the robusta cultivars are less tasty than the arabica cultivars. On the other hand c. robusta cultivars are not as robust as c. arabica cultivars with respect to resistance against pathogens.

The opinions of young professionals such as Ph.D. students were very positive around the Tropentag conference. Tropentag accommodates a diversity of disciplines, themes, cultures, and geographical territories and as such it has grown as a major European platform to cater development. Watch and listen to student voices..

Pigs, sheeps and chicken...
Almost all the common domesticated animals were present at the oral presentations about the Animal nutrition and supplementation. The topics covered in the presentations ranged from aspects of grazing, nutritional values as well as digestabilities of various components used in animal feeding.

Mounir Louhaichi presented his efforts to make applicable GPS technology in tracking and recording the spatial and temporal pattern when moving. This approach may help to improve the grazing schedules in order to optimaly use land resources in a more cost-effective and precise way.

How does different feeding supplements influences the performance of milk constitution of Awassi sheeps in Middle Eastern countries? Muhi El-Dine Hilali from international Cener for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) presented the outcomes of his research with respect to this question.

The to Prof. Kreutzer unknown tropical legume Mucuna pruriens L. formally known as Velvet Bean was investigated in the study of Vellingiri Vadivel from the University of Hohenheim. It was shown, that the Velvet Bean can be suggested as an alternative component in poultry feed after further investigation of the effects of toxins.