Investing in people, investing in the future

If you’ve read about development or non-profit work, you’ve likely heard the term ‘capacity building’. It’s development jargon, a term that’s talked about and represented in figures and facts. For the Integrated Pest Management Feed the Future Food Security Innovation Lab (IPM IL), capacity building goes beyond numbers on a page. It’s about investing in people and providing them with the tools and knowledge to learn, teach, grow, and discover.

The IPM IL, managed by Virginia Tech’s Center for International Research, Education, and Development and funded by USAID, promotes pest management methods that reduce damage caused by pests without harming the environment.

In order to promote IPM methods, the program funds training for growers, scientists, researchers, government officials, and extension agents. This training takes the form of workshops, seminars, farmer field schools, and demonstration plots.

“Capacity building is about developing resources for the long term,” says Muni Muniappan, director of the IPM IL. Capacity building through long-term training involves funding two categories of IPM specialists: graduate students and professional researchers. These individuals are based in the United States and overseas; they are Americans and foreign nationals.

By investing in these people, IPM becomes integrated into a country on a large scale at a variety of levels. The people supported by the IPM IL become government officials responsible for setting and implementing agricultural policy; they become professors who teach and perform research; and they serve on international agricultural bodies. In this way, the IPM IL carries out its charge to bring lasting change.

Gopinath Kodetham: Professor and virologist

IPM IL funding leads to $1.5M award from India for virologist

After postdoctoral positions in virology at Texas A&M and Oregon State, Gopinath Kodetham moved back to India and joined the University of Hyderabad in 2007. For junior faculty at Indian universities like Kodetham, finding funding is crucial, as they typically receive little start-up support.

At the recommendation of Naidu Rayapati, IPM IL researcher and professor of plant pathology at Washington State University, the program provided Kodetham a small grant. With the funding, Kodetham was able to identify the most prevalent plant diseases in Andhra Pradesh state, including newer, economically-important vegetable viruses that had not yet been reported in India.

The IPM IL also views Kodetham as a long-term partner, someone who is interested in training the next generation of scientists in farmer-friendly IPM approaches to pest management.

Now, he is on a fast track to building a state-of-the-art lab in Hyderabad. He was recently awarded $1.5 million in funding from Indian federal agencies to pursue work on a serious virus affecting cucurbits. With this new award, he aims to create a major diagnostic center for plant viral infections.

Rayapati envisions scientists in neighboring countries seeking out Kodetham’s advice on plant viruses in the future. “We have contributed to a faculty who can contribute in turn, not only in agriculture but also in other developing countries,” says Rayapati.

“The initial funding from IPM IL, though small, is immense,” Kodetham says, “and is paying dividends.”

Miriam Otipa: Researcher at KARI and Ph.D. student

Research on viruses fills gap in Kenya to help passion fruit production

Miriam Otipa is busy. She’s a senior research scientist at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). She’s an award-winning virologist whose Ph.D. work at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Nairobi, Kenya, is being funded by the IPM IL. And she’s presented her research on passion fruit viruses to folks whose names you might recognize: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Second Lady Jill Biden, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah.

Miriam Otipa, left, presents her research to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in Nairobi, Kenya, August 2009.
Miriam Otipa, left, presents her research to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in Nairobi, Kenya, August 2009.

In Kenya, passion fruit is grown predominantly by small-holder female growers. As Otipa explains, “The crop has great potential for both local and export markets. However, it is hugely constrained by the woodiness virus disease complex. This has resulted in yield losses of up to 80% and greatly reduced the life span of the crop to less than two years.” Otipa’s work focuses on finding the causal agent of the virus, with hopes of saving a promising industry that provides a crucial source of income to women.

To further enhance her scientific skills in virus identification, Otipa spent most of 2010 in Ohio State’s plant pathology department and with the International Plant Diagnostic Network’s principal investigator, Sally Miller.

Upon her return to Kenya, she developed a manual for extension agents and farmers on passion fruit disease management and worked with nine farmer groups on the same topic, with an eye on commercialization and job creation. Her role in passion fruit virus research fills a gap for Kenya to help that industry, and her involvement with the IPM IL has had a direct effect on ground-level efforts.

Laura Zseleczky: Researcher for the IPM IL’s Gender Global Theme

Former graduate student provides critical research on IPM and tomatoes in Ghana

When she was a graduate student at Virginia Tech, Laura Zseleczky was one of the few funded by the IPM IL in the program’s main offices at Virginia Tech. When not studying for her M.S. in public and international affairs, Zseleczky could be found computing statistics or corresponding with program partners around the world as the graduate research assistant for the Gender Global Theme of the IPM IL. She is now a researcher in the same program.
“Laura is an integral part of the IPM IL gender team,” says Maria Elisa Christie, program coordinator for the global program and director of Virginia Tech’s Women and Gender in International Development.

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Laura Zseleczky harvesting tomatoes with farmers in Ghana.

When Christie began planning an IPM IL gender workshop in Ghana in 2011, she enlisted Zseleczky to help organize and be on the ground as a special assistant.

Although Zseleczky’s time in the community was limited, she says that the new understanding she gained from talking with farmers as well as visiting and working with them in their fields was extremely valuable. “Perhaps even more exciting,” she adds, “was how many of them seemed interested in the work of the IPM IL and what an important opportunity that presents for the project to continue sustainably in the future.”

Zseleczky’s hands-on experience in the office and abroad has also helped make conceptual thinking in her courses more tangible. “I’ve been able to see concepts applied in real time at regional and global levels,” she says.

She is now on track for a career in international development, and her contribution to the IPM IL’s efforts on tomato farming in Ghana will be felt for years to come.