We part to meet again: Tropentag 2012 makes way for Tropentag 2013.

This year’s edition of the esteemed conference, Tropentag (www.tropentag.de) was brought to a close on Friday 21st September 2012 in Göttingen. Running under the theme “Resilience of Agricultural Systems against Crises”, the conference brought together 721 participants from 71 different countries to provide solution for agriculture especially in this era of global warming. Addressing the closing Ceremony, Professor Andreas Bürkert offered an invaluable highlight of the discussions that characterized the 3 day conference. He reiterated some important lessons, ideas, innovations and technologies to buffer the agricultural systems to ensure productive and sustainable output from the micro-level to regional scales. Commenting on the success of the conference, He commended the magnitude of poster sessions that characterized this year’s Tropentag which amounted to some 287 posters. He evaluated the poster sessions as an important part of the conference as most of the innovative ideas were presented on the posters. On attendance, 20% of the registered participants whose work had been published in the Tropentag brochure were noted to have been absent for which Professor Bürkert gave an advice to be present next year as the work of any absentee participants will not be published and the owners blacklisted. Women were also advised to take the opportunity of reaching out to society and making impacts by participating in such platforms as Tropentag as the women attendance was 35%. To reward participants for their ideas and innovations, some posters as a tradition of the Tropentag conference were awarded. The award offered by AgriNatura awarded the three best posters looking at the importance of the research topic to society, the credibility of the result and the reflectiveness of the objectives in the conclusion. Receiving 200 Euros for 3rd place, Christopher Muenke’s work on “Market for edible tarantulas and crickets in Cambodia- potential for traditional food sources” won the third place. “Impacts of land use change on soil organic carbon, a pan tropic study” by Olive Van Straaten took away 300 Euros for second place whilst Sebastian Romulli’s “Optimization of mechanical oil extraction from Husked kernels of Jatropha curcus L. using Matrix additives” won him the grand prize of 500 Euros. According to the judges, participants must leave their posters for assessment before removal as most posters were missing before the assessment. In his final words, the organizers of this year’s Tropentag headed by Professor Anthony Whitbread of the Georg-August Universität Göttingen branded this year’s Tropentag as a huge success and in a characteristic fashion passed on the mantle of organization of Tropentag 2013 to Hohenheim University, Stuggar Germany for which Professor Folkard Asch gladly received. Tropentag 2013 according to Professor Asch will deliberate on the important theme of ’Agricultural Development Within the Rural- Urban Continuum’ from the 17-19th of September 2013. One thing I know is that I will not miss Tropentag 2013 for anything in this world so let us meet there.

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