Learning the strings & meeting the team

Brief introduction of the invaluable team here without whom we'd have no mini-livestock to start with!

This is Emmanuel Kwakye (corner right), he's been working at ARI for the past 13 years and has a strong background in Insect Production Systems. He knows the city&fields like the back of his hand is a passionate communicator. We'll be working together on the survey and interview part of this research.

To his left, Pierre-Olivier Maquart, our entomologist and phd student at the University of Stirling. He is in charge to scale up the project and identifies new substrates to feed the flies, tests their nutrient composition and then the maggots’ nutrient after being fed with them. Notice here in the picture the coffee coloured BSF grubs? These are the pre-pupae; and they're getting ready to turn into grown adults. At this final stage, BSF naturally crawl up the cement ramp to find a good site for pupation and ultimately drop to the other side where we can collect them. But more on that later.




Meanwhile (bottom right), I'm just playing around with dried fruits from the market. Once all of it has been broken down to pieces, we can send the samples to Stirling where they can compare the results of our field and lab trials.

Down in the middle here is Deborah Ampomah, our trained technician from ProteInsect. Her past experience was in Ashaiman on the previous experimental site and now she is our is our eyes and ears on the BSF rearing site.

And last but not least Gabriel Adu-Aboagye. He is our research scientist at CSIR-ARI and is the supervisor in charge of the Poultry feeding trials with the Black Soldier Fly.

I cannot be grateful enough for the warm welcome everyone has given me since my arrival. It wasn't long before we'd done a grand-tour of the whole neighbourhood. Now, time to get hands on the field..


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