Day: October 18, 2022

Nearly a decade ago, farmers in India began growing a staple grain that was fortified with iron and zinc to address a longstanding health problem – anemia among women and children. Since 2018, its cultivation is also expanding in Africa.

Now millions of people consume the grain, helping ward off malnutrition that results, not only from how much people eat, but what they eat.

Pearl millet has long made up the bulk of diets of rural communities in drought-prone regions of India and Africa. But while the grain fills stomachs, it lacks crucial vitamins and minerals resulting in what is called “hidden hunger” among people who cannot afford balanced diets.

Mahalingam Govindaraj, an agricultural scientist based in Hyderabad city, told VOA it took nearly a decade of research to develop the biofortified pearl millet. He will be awarded the 2022 Norman E. Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application on October 19 by the World Food Prize Foundation for his “outstanding leadership in mainstreaming biofortified crops, particularly pearl millet, in India and Africa.”

Govindaraj is a senior scientist with Washington-based HarvestPlus, the Alliance of Biodiversity International, and The International Center for Tropical Agriculture, that have focused on fortifying staple crops with vitamins and minerals to address micronutrient deficiency.

The son of a farmer, Govindaraj was the first in his family to graduate from college and was excited to learn what impact science could have on agriculture. The biofortification of staple crops had emerged on the horizon and he began work on millets. “It was an emotional choice for me because before my father switched to rice, my family used to grow millets,” he recalled. “The idea is not to replace what is traditionally eaten, but to make it more nutritious.”

Packed With Iron

Pearl millet is a hardy grain grown widely in arid regions of India and Africa. Govindaraj’s farming background equipped him to know exactly what farmers would want. “We had to ensure that its maturity period should be short, it should be a high yielding variety and the grain color should be good, because otherwise they would not grow it,” he said.

Iron-enriched pearl millet seeds, called “Dhanashakti,” were first given to farmers in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Initially, seed companies used vans with loudspeakers in villages to popularize it.

Now, about 120,000 Indian farmers grow the grain known as “bajra” across India’s central and southern regions. By 2024, an estimated nine million people will eat a traditional flatbread called “roti” made with this grain.

Its benefits: 200 grams of this grain provide women with about 80 percent of their recommended daily allowance of iron, thus providing a cheap source of the micronutrient in a country where nearly 60 percent of the children below five and over half the pregnant women are anemic.

In the last four years, farmers in the drought-prone areas of the Sahelian zone of West Africa in countries like Niger and Senegal have also begin growing iron biofortified pearl millet known as “Chakti.”

“Biofortification is gaining momentum because it can ensure better nutrition to the coming generation and is cost effective,” points out Monika Garg at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute in Mohali, India. “If nutrients are added to the crop itself, it reaches the masses easily and is cheaper. While giving artificial supplements is possible, it is far harder to reach the rural poor with these interventions.”

Grain Addresses “Hidden Hunger”

The benefits of the fortified pearl millet are already evident. A study by Britain-based BMC Public Health in India’s Maharashtra state showed that a diet of iron-rich pearl millet given to a group of adolescents for six months reversed iron deficiency and also improved memory, attention and physical activity levels.

The scale of “hidden hunger” is huge – an estimated two billion people, or nearly one in four persons, suffer from vitamin and nutrient deficiencies, according to the World Health Organization.

Govindaraj points out that the benefits of biofortified crops were also highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic when tens of thousands of people grappled with reduced food portions because they lost incomes. There are also concerns that climate change and food inflation as a result of the Ukraine conflict are exacerbating malnutrition.

In recent years biofortification of key food crops to tackle malnutrition has emerged firmly on the radar of India and many other developing countries.

In India, several government agricultural institutes are working on it. Besides pearl millet, crops such as wheat and rice have also been fortified with micronutrients.

The next challenge is to mainstream those biofortified crops by ensuring that all farmers plant seeds containing micronutrients. The Indian government has already stipulated minimum standards of zinc and iron that all varieties of pearl millet should contain.

“This is a major milestone,” says Govindaraj. “A beginning has been made and as its cultivation gets scaled up over the next five or six years, it will ensure that every person consuming pearl millet gets micronutrients along with their energy needs.”

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Who said there is nothing new under the sun?

One of the hottest innovations for the non-polluting generation of electricity is floating photovoltaics, or FPV, which involves anchoring solar panels in bodies of water, especially lakes, reservoirs and seas. Some projects in Asia incorporate thousands of panels to generate hundreds of megawatts.

FPV got a head start in Asia and Europe where it makes a lot of economic sense with open land highly valued for agriculture.

The first modest systems were installed in Japan and at a California winery in 2007 and 2008.

On land, a one-megawatt projects requires between one and 1.6 hectares.

Floating solar projects are even more attractive when they can be built on bodies of water adjacent to hydropower plants with existing transmission lines.

Most of the largest such projects are in China and India. There also are large-scale facilities in Brazil, Portugal and Singapore.

A proposed 2.1 gigawatt floating solar farm on a tidal flat on the coast of the Yellow Sea in South Korea, which would contain five million solar modules over an area covering 30 square kilometers with a $4 billion price tag, is facing an uncertain future with a new government in Seoul. President Yoon Suk-yeol has indicated he prefers to boost nuclear over solar power.

Other gigawatt-scale projects are moving off the drawing board in India and Laos, as well as the North Sea, off the Dutch coast.

The technology has also excited planners in sub-Saharan Africa with the lowest electricity access rate in the world and an abundance of sunshine.

In countries that depend on a lot of hydropower, “there’s concerns around what does power generation look like during droughts, for example, and with climate change, we expect that we’ll see more extreme weather events. When we’re thinking about droughts, there is the opportunity to then have FPV as another renewable energy option in your toolkit essentially,” explained Sika Gadzanku, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. “So instead of depending so much on hydro, now you can use more FPV and reduce your dependence on hydro, during very dry seasons, to use your floating solar photovoltaics.”

A one percent coverage of hydropower reservoirs with floating solar panels could provide an increase of 50 percent of the annual production of existing hydroelectric plants in Africa, according to a study funded by the European Commission.

Challenges

There are potential floatovoltaic hazards, however. A plant caught fire in Chiba prefecture in Japan in 2019. Officials blamed a typhoon for shifting panels one atop another, generating intense heat and possibly sparking the fire at the 18-hectare facility containing more than 50,000 floating solar panels at the Yamakura Dam.

The most significant barrier to wider adoption of the technology, at present, is the price. It is more expensive to construct a floating array than a similarly sized installation on land. But with the higher costs there are additional benefits: Due to passive cooling of water bodies, the floating panels can function more effectively than conventional solar panels. They also reduce light exposure and lower the water temperature, minimizing harmful algae growth.

That all sounded promising to officials in the town of Windsor in northern California’s wine country. Nearly 5,000 solar panels, each generating 360 watts of electricity, are now floating on one of Windsor’s wastewater ponds.

“They’re all interlinked. Each panel gets its own float. And they actually move quite well with wave action and wind action,” . You’d be surprised how they can kind of just suck up the waves and ride them out without breaking or coming apart,” said Garrett Broughton, the senior civil engineer for Windsor’s public works department.

The floating panels are easy on the environment and Windsor’s budget, in which the wastewater plant’s electric bill was the town government’s largest

Town Council member Debora Fudge pushed for the 1.78-megawatt project over an alternative of putting solar panels atop carports.

“They offset 350 metric tons of carbon dioxide yearly. And they also provide 90 percent of the power that we need for all of the operations for treating wastewater, for all the operations of our corporation yard and also for pumping our wastewater to the geysers, which, is a geothermal field, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) north,” Fudge told VOA.

The town leases the floating panels from the company that installed them, which gives it a set price for electricity on a long-term contract, meaning Windsor is paying about 30% of what it previously spent for the same amount of power.

“It’s not like we’ve invested in something where we’re not going to get a payback. We’re getting a payback as we speak. And we’ll get a payback for 25 years,” said Windsor’s mayor, Sam Salmon.

The floating systems are not intended to fully blanket bodies of water, allowing for other activities to continue, such as boating and fishing.

“We do not assume the floating structure will cover the whole water body, it’s often a very small percentage of that water body,” NREL’s Gadzanku told VOA. “Even just from a visual perspective you don’t want to maybe see PV panels covering an entire reservoir.”

NREL has identified 24,419 man-made bodies of water in the United States as suitable for FPV placement. Floating panels covering little more than one-fourth the area of each these sites would potentially generate nearly 10 percent of America’s energy needs, according to the lab.

Among the sites is the 119-hectare Smith Lake, a man-made reservoir managed by Stafford County in Virginia to produce drinking water. It is also a site for recreational fishing adjacent to the U.S. Marine Corps’ Quantico base.

“Many of these eligible bodies of water are in water-stressed areas with high land acquisition costs and high electricity prices, suggesting multiple benefits of FP technologies,” wrote the study’s authors.

“It really is an option with a lot of proven technology behind it,” said Gadzanku.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – National Assembly Speaker Carolina Cerqueira Tuesday in Luanda discussed with the Egyptian Ambassador to Angola, Mohamed Atta, the strengthening of Parliamentary relations between the two countries.

Speaking to the press at the end of the meeting, the diplomat said that the audience also served to analyse the contribution of the Egyptian Parliament to strengthening of democracy in Angola.

Mohamed Atta said the Parliaments of Angola and Egypt cooperate in different areas, in particular that related to democracy.

The two countries have excellent trade relations. In 2019, the two countries’   turnover increased from US$600 million to US$3 billion.

Still, under bilateral cooperation, Angola intends to strengthen trade relations and take advantage of the Egyptian experience in the production of electrical appliances, car components and electronic industries.

Traditional authorities

In another audience, the National Assembly Speaker discussed with the sovereign Tchongolola Tchongonga, King of the Ovimbundu Kingdom in Bailundo, central Huambo province, issues linked to the beginning of the agricultural year.

 

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency

 

Luanda – Angola and Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Tuesday in Luanda discussed the strengthening of bilateral relations, with stress to the political-diplomatic field, states a press release from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Mirex).

ANGOP learnt that the Angolan delegation was headed the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Communities, Domingos Vieira Lopes, while the ambassador Hamdi El Jalil Aali represented SADR.

The diplomat praised Angola for the polite and civic way as well as democratic environment it held the 24 August elections.

Political and diplomatic relations between the States date back since 1976.

Angola was one of the first countries to recognise the independence of the Arab country, months after its proclamation.

African Group meets in New York

Angola participated in New York in the meeting of the United Nations African Group to review progress made and emerging challenges, from the discussions and recommendations coming out of the 2019 meeting.

According to the document, the event also aimed to strengthen the impact of the group while reflecting on the need for better cohesion, unity and solidarity in driving African priorities at the United Nations.

Under the motto “Africa in search of a just multilateral order,” the event, co-organised by the African Group and the Permanent Observer Mission of the African Union, took place on 14 -15 October.

For two days, African diplomats used the occasion to address and identify the challenges faced, as well as explore ways to improve, consolidate and revive the platform.

The country was represented by Ambassador Maria de Jesus Ferreira, permanent representative of the Mission of the Republic of Angola to the United Nations in New York.

 

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency

 

Luanda – Angola’s Airlines (TAAG) signed a partnership agreement with the Portuguese Airport Authority (ANA) this month.

The deal provides for the use of the space and ensure convenience of the lounge area (comfortable space) of this Portuguese institution at Humberto Delgado airport, in Lisbon.

The agreement allows the Angolan airline to moves from the TAP Air Portugal lounge to the ANA lounge, the entity responsible for managing Lisbon airport, states a press release reached ANGOP on Tuesday.

According to the document, this change is part of the permanent improvement of the travel experience of TAAG passengers and improving the Angolan company’s operating costs.

TAAG said that the passengers traveling in premium classes (business or first class) have free access to the lounge, as do Umbi Umbi Silver and Umbi
Umbi Gold cardholders (in the latter case, the passenger can bring a guest).

Located in the commercial area of Terminal 1, in the Schengen area of Lisbon Airport, the Lisbon lounge offers passengers privacy, comfort
and tranquility, as well as a set of free and pay-per-use services.

 

Source: Angola Press News Agency