Christian Andres – a young scientist and a specialist on yam – a native plant in West Africa, is one of the 3 award winners of the Hans H. Ruthenberg Award for Graduates. This is a prestige award in the academia of agriculture for diploma or master thesis that contribute on food security research and reduction of poverty in developing countries. He is now working as a research assistant for production system at the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture (FiBL). Chritian wrote his master thesis at ETH Zurich about fertilization of Yam with poultry manure and its effects on nutrient dynamics and nutrient use efficiency.

Do we know enough about all crops of the world before we step into teasing evolution within the pool of a tiny number of species? Not well discussed and not well understood, an important tropical crop in Africa and other parts of the world reports: "Yam not a grain, yet I feed 60 million people every day. Yam a productive and valuable crop for farmers, getting as large as 2.5 meters long and weigh up to 70 kilograms. However, you know so little about how much I can give". Read the full story about the efforts of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT) for saving endangered yams in this month's Scientific American.