Sheep and Goats

Two new graduates in the vet department: Ariel Torrelio and Silvia Yujra.

Silvia looked at the digestion of plants in goats -- by putting mesh bags of forages in a hole in their stomachs! The process, called fistulation, required a simple surgery, and does not harm the animal. The results showed that the goats digested supplemental legume forages more readily, and that grass forages provided the roughage that they needed.

Ariel looked at parasites in sheep, and found a variety of parasites that were easily treated with anti-parasite medicine; but that animals on common grazing pasture are readily re-infected, requiring that all herders deparasitize their animals at the same time.

Both students have been at the college for many years, and we are glad to see these "veterans" reach their dream.

New corn variety

Corn is not widely grown in the Yungas -- root crops like taro, manioc and racacha are the more typical starch crops. To help farmers increase their options for basic food crops, student Aldo Estévez worked with farmers in a community across the valley, San Juan de la Miel, to introduce two new corn varieties. One of these varieties, a hybrid called Tuxpeño opaco 2, adapted well to the climate, outperforming the most common local variety Cubano. These farmers now have a new variety of corn to add to their toolbox, and the college now has one more new graduate. Congratulations, Aldo.

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P.S. Years ago when I worked with families around Carmen Pampa to grow kitchen gardens. An old widow and her teenage son from San Cristóbal who participated invited me to dinner one night, and we had sopa de choclo, corn soup, with a corn variety like the one Aldo researched. Here is the recipe.

5 cobs corn (ripe sweet corn or field corn at milk stage)
1 onion, peeled and diced
2 T. oil (or butter)
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
1 cup grated cheese (salty fresh campo cheese is nice)

* Cut corn from the cob and grind with an old hand grinder; or blend kernels with some water in the blender.
* Saute onion in butter or oil until soft; add garlic and saute 2 minutes more.
* Add ground corn, 4-6 cups water (for a thicker or thinner soup), salt and pepper. Boil for a few minutes.
* Serve hot with cheese on top.

Let's hear it for Rotary Club!

Last week we had two friends from Iowa on campus, Bob Rennebohm and Russ Hill from the Rotary Club of America in Des Moines, Iowa. Their club, in association with the club La Paz-Sur in Bolivia, are sponsoring the construction of a recycling center. The center will collect and process garbage from Campus Manning, the community and the high school, and serve as a training center for students of all ages.

The week started with a ground-breaking ceremony with the biship of Coroico Monseignor Juan Vargas, the community president Willie Aliaga, and students from the college.


Photo: Bob and Russ at the construction site.

Later the members of the La Paz club came and we spent the afternoon sharing stories and visiting the highlights of campus.

The rest of the week they toured the campus, eyes open for other possible projects in the future, and soaked in the atmosphere of student life.

We were very grateful for their visit -- seeing the college with your own eyes is an experience unto itself, and we see ourselves in new ways when visitors come and share their experience. And grateful for their generosity: the recycling center is college dream, ignited by Franciscan missionary Alexandra Hoch during her service in 2002-2004.

Cattle and Coffee

Yesterday morning, two more students successfully defended their research projects.

First was Juan Enrrique Chambi, who worked with a cattle ranch in the tropics of Bolivia to see whether the cattle did better walking to the market (a 3 day walk), or traveling in a truck to market. It turned out that walking the cattle to market was more effective in terms of stress on the cattle, and economically. This information helps the ranch where the study was done, and applies to ranches all over that region.

Then Richard Agramont defended his project comparing different traps to reduce the population of the coffee borer pest in the region's coffee fields. The biggest pest problem in Bolivia in this coffee bean pest, leading to losses of up to 50% of the coffee crop. Richard calculated the losses in this area at 20%.

Richard concluded that using locally-made traps with a mixture of ethanol and methanol was the most effective trap, as well as the least expensive. Richard has already spoken with farmer groups in Coroico and Caranavi, and is helping these farmers build and install traps, made very simply with plastic 2 liter bottles.


Photo: Richard Agramont examining coffee borer damage.

Congratulations to these two new graduates!

The Bee's Knees

Oscar Claros, a student in the agronomy department, defended his research project today, examining the diversity of insects in the superfamily Apoidea, a.k.a. bees. He collected 83 different species, tracing them to different ecological niches. He dedicated the work to his father, who passed away before seeing his son graduate from the college. Congraduations on your hard work, Oscar. Your father would be proud.


Photo: Oscar with a Malaise insect trap, used for flying insects.

Water System a Go

In 2005, through a generous donation from the Sieben Foundation, matched by USAID, the UAC built and runs a coffee processing plant, transforming coffee berries into green coffee beans, ready for toasting for the local market or for export.


Photo: Coffee processing plant in Carmen Pampa.

This transformation results in a large quantity of wastewater, and the plant has a wastewater treatment system that removes solids with filters and flocculation, and then oxygenates the water to remove the last of the pollutants. Then the water is discharged back into the environment.


Photo: Water treatment system.

Student Javier Álvarez supervised the wastewater treatment process last year as his research project, and found that the system did not effectively remove soluable solids from the wastewater. Javier had suggestions about how to improve the process, especially some modification of the oxigenation tanks to take better advantage of bacteria from the environment to degrade these solids; and cleaning the beans mechanically instead of depending on a fermentation process to remove the mucilagenous layer of the beans.

Javier got a 90 on his defense, the highest score this year so far. Nice job, Javier!


Photo: Javier testing the coffee plant wastewater.

Primary Education Anniversary

June 6th is the Día del Maestro in Bolivia, National Teacher's Day, and also the anniversary of the Primary Education Department, now seven years old.

The celebrations started with seminars on Thursday night about education reform in Bolivia, and the Aparecida Document from General Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean. Friday was dedicated to a mass, then sports during the day and a cultural night in the evening.

The cultural night started with the presentation of an award to Ricardo Trigoso, the founder of the department. He gave credit to Sister Damon for her vision, and emphasized the importance of education, especially on the elementary level. That was followed by poetry, music and dancing, especially the traditional dances from Bolivia. Ecotourism did an incredible interpretation of a dance from the Amazon; and each education class presented a different dance: Calcheño (inset), Morenada, Waca Waca and Diablada.


Today is more sports and a dance at 8 p.m. Congrats to Education on their anniversary, and to Sister Damon, Ricardo Trigoso, Eustaquio Menacho and Andrés Pardo, the leaders of this incredible department.

Beans!

Minutes ago, another student from the agronomy department successfully defended his research project -- one more graduate!

Zenón Maquera compared the production of 7 varieties of beans in the community of Coroico Viejo, across the valley where the university has an experiment station. Beans can have a great impact on the poor nutrition in the region where protein and iron deficiencies are major reasons for poor development and illness in children.

Zenón went beyond the scope of his project, meeting with farmers and helping them plant the best varieties and even teaching the families to cook them. Thank you, Zenón -- you will go far.


Photo: Zenón in Coroico Viejo clearing the field for his beans.

One for the fungus

An agronomy student, Ruddy Nina, successfully defended his research project yesterday. Coffee seedlings sometimes suffer from damping off, a fungal disease that attacks the roots and stems. One organic way to treat this disease is by applying another fungus that prevents the disease. Ruddy looked at how the biological control fungus Trichoderma affects fungi that cause damping off, and noted that in the laboratory, Trichoderma can reduce the growth of the pathogen by 60%. Call that one for the fungus, and one for the UAC, as the agronomy department gradutes its 47th student. Way to go, Ruddy.