MONISH JOSE: Value Chain Analysis of Medicinal Plant Market in Kerala Since Kerala is the world’s most famous area for ayurvedic medicine, there is an increasing demand in ayurvedic plants, while the area under medical cultivation stays the same. According to this circumstance, the region has to face several problems, which have to be solved. Most important, there has to be set up a price regulatory body and an education system to teach the farmers about scientific harvesting methods. BOHUMIL HAVRLAND: Agricultural Marketing Information System (AMIS) The Agricultural Marketing Information System (AMIS) has been developed with the help of agricultural producers in the Republic of Moldova. It operates as a facilitator system and is destined to play an important role for producers as well as for tradesmen and middlemen to reach information about each other. Especially poor famers have the possibility to access the system in different centers, which are located all over Moldova. DANSINOU SILVERE TOVIGNAN: Agricultural Value Chain Modeling and Governance: The Case of Shea Butter in Benin As agriculture is very important in developing countries, value chain promotion is a development strategy which should help local farmers to get access to the global market. The example of the shea butter value chain of Benin shows us, that many actors are involved in the chain, fulfilling their specific functions. This leads to a higher profit for all the actors belonging to the supply chain.

Aline Dos Santos Neutzling: Predicted and true herd development over ten years by applying a bio-economic model to village cattle in South-western Niger. Ms. Neutzling gave a presentation about the cattle development of 40 households in Niger between 1998 and 2008. This development was predicted with a computer model (PRY Herd Life) using stochastic and deterministic modeling with fixed input parameters. The model predicted that there would be 153 heads of cattle in 2008; there were 151 heads, so a good simulation. The model did not perform well for the herd structure, this might have been caused by the fact that the model only has 7 culling strategies to choose from and that this is fixed for the entire time period. Faradilla Attamimi: Bali Cattle Performance in Smallholder Mixed Systems of Indigenous and Transmigrant Farmers on Ceram Island, Indonesia

Watch the provocative statements of Prof Paul Collier, who is of the opinion that agricultural scientists are more attached to emotions than to the evidences. He adviced that young agricultural scientist, in order to fight against hunger and poverty in Africa, should focus on the evidence based practices but not to attach to the prejudices of the contemporary science parctices. Do you agree or disagree? Read summary of his presentation in earlier post, 'How to feed the bottom billion?' and watch the video and comment

Improving Soil Zinc Biovailability in Response to Crop Residues and Wheat Zn Efficient Genotype – Vajiheh Dorostkar Zinc is an important nutrient in the human diet. It is also an important plant micronutrient. Approximately, 50% of land under cereal cultivation is deficient in zinc. These lands are generally located in arid areas. In Iran, where the study was conducted, around 80% of the cultivated land is zinc deficient. Most crop residues are burned or grazed by animals, but residues balance pH, produce organic matter, and improve C:N, etc. As a result, these residues can be used to improve zinc bioavailability in the soil. Crop residues and wheat cultivars were studied to examine their contribution to soil zinc bioavailability in the soil. Sunflower, clover, bean, sorghum and safflower were used in study. The study showed that the use of crop residues from all of the crops have the potential to enhance the zinc bioavailability in arid Iranian agricultural systems. Vajiheh Dorostka gives her presentation on zinc bioavailability and crop residues in Iran Consequences of Sequential Leaf Harvest on Root Yield and N Export of Two Cassava Cultivars in South-central Cameroon – Jelle Willem Duindam

Albert Engel, from GTZ told us his opinion about the tropentag. He considers Tropentag as an avenue to look up broad spectrum of research and to link up to the people who are doing the research. Accoding to his opinion it is an important event to identify the bottlenecks, information and research need and an opportunity to get in contact with people who are interested in development cooperation. Watch his inspiring comment about the student reporter, an innovation of the Tropentag 2010

The SFIAR network, the Swiss Forum of International Agricultural Research, is a platform, which was launched at the ministerial at the ministerial conference on international agricultural research in Lucerne in 1995. In the context of the Swiss Session at the Tropentag 2010, the SFIAR gave an award for outstanding scientific work. The award carries a value of Sfr 5000.- The winner of this year was Dr. Lian Pin Koh. He graduated from the National University of Singapore with degrees in Bachelor and Master of Science, and from Princeton University with a Doctorate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Currently he is a Senior Research Fellow at ETH Zurich. Lian Pin's main interests lie in basic and applied ecology, as well as environmental science and policy.

Yesterday, Prof. Dr. Michael Kreuzer of North-South Center opened Tropentag 2010 with a speech “About World Food System” together with 1,228 registrants from 83 countries. This was immediately followed by interesting and thought provoking speeches by experts such as Christian Nelleman from UNEP entitled “Ensuring food security while safeguarding the environment” where he said, “while agriculture surely has impacts on the environment, but more important to understand is how the environment provides the platform for food production”. Moreover, Jimmy Smith of World Bank Institute delivered his speech entitled “The role of livestock for the world food system” indicating that “problem is the availability and accessibility of those foods in developing countries as feeding people does not necessarily nourishing them”. Right after the break, Foundation Fiat Panis awarded 3 recent graduates with Hans H. Ruthernberg-Graduate-Award together with 3 research professionals with Josef G. Knoll-European Science-Award as they managed to produce excellent scientific work meant to contribute to the reduction of hunger in developing countries. The keynote programme was then continued by Paul Collier of Oxford University with his speech entitled “How to feed the bottom billion?” which actually inciting an out-of-comfort-zone discussion pushing for a more pragmatic approach in solving the big question, as his title proposed.

The first poster session of Tropentag 2010 took place on Tueasday afternoon.