The Ethiopian Institute of Biotechnology has been conducting a number of problem-solving technological develop- ment researches and studies to address societal problems. It also gives support to 26 researchers serving in different universities and individuals working privately and undertaking researches and technological innovations to help solve societal problems.
Recently, Debre Berhan University has developed a new technology which converts coffee residue (husks) to natural fertilizers.
According to Dr. Haile Dadi, Institute’s Deputy Director General, previously, the coffee residue was causing health problems on communities and animals. Furthermore, it was polluting the environment. However, the new technology, apart from eliminating the husks that were harmful to humans’ health and the environment, it is used to make the soil fertile.
Ethiopia is one of the coffee growing countries; and commonly in coffee growing areas a huge amount of husks is accumulated year after year. Converting these residues to something valuable has greater socioeconomic rewards. Thus, coffee growers and investors should promote the technology and utilize it effectively to secure the health of the community and protect the environment.
Noting that the Institute has recently signed Memorandum of Understanding with various government and private organizations and international partners, he said: “we have reached consensus to work on sectors such as agriculture, health, environment, biotechnology and industry.”
The collaboration, hopefully, will enable the Institute to develop new technological and research findings that are crucial to national development.
The other technological researches and studies, the Institute working on is detection of aflatoxins in agricultural food crops. ‘Aflatoxins are a family of toxins produced by certain fungi that are found on agricultural crops such as maize (corn), peanuts, cottonseed, and tree nuts)’. As a result, it is enabled to identify agricultural crops that produce aflatoxins and the next step is to take on preventive work assisted by various technologies, he said.
To scale up the existing problem solving research findings and technological innovations and transfer to the community at the desired level, working jointly with various ministries, government and partner organizations is vital.
Thus, stakeholders would take Institute’s model research findings and technological outputs and promote them to the community after expanding them. However, there is no structural mechanism to duplicate these models and make it available to the user widely.
Similarly, activities are underway to enrich protein from chickpeas and combat the chronic malnutrition problem which leads young children to become stunted, to be too short for their age.
As chickpeas are rich in protein and their nutritional values are high, their health benefit is great which make them appropriate food choice for young children to arrest health complication caused by poor nutrition, protein deficiency and malnourishment – marasmus, impaired growth and development that children encounter. The protein developed from chickpeas will be prepared with other nutrients to use, he added.
As to him, the research has yielded encouraging outcome and the result will be announced later this year.
Dr. Endale Amare, Senior Nutritional Researcher with the Institute and is currently developing protein from chickpeas, on his part said that chickpeas before enrichment has 10 to16 percent protein content. The current research work to extract the protein from the crop aims to increase the content level from 60 to 90 percent. Not only that, but efforts are also carried out to improve the iron, calcium and zinc content of the crop.
Traditionally, there is a trend of feeding children without the proper enrichment of the cereals. Since this is done without identifying the nutrition content of the food, it has its own side effects. The research will curb such kind of trend. Most importantly, it will have substantial contribution to generate children with bright minds and free of various health problems, he remarked.
The Ethiopian Herald December11, 2019
BY STAFF REPORTER
