US (AZ): Lecturer transfers intensive agriculture technologies from CEAC

In the past several years, Arizona's Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (CEAC )has sponsored an international agriculturist to attend the Greenhouse Crop Production and Design short course. The first was from the country of Turkey, then last year from Colombia and this year from Malta.

Mr. Malcolm Borg, from Malta, is a lecturer in the Agribusiness Institute at the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology in the town of Qormi.

Malta is one of the world's smallest and most densely populated countries. It is a popular holiday destination making tourism the nation's main source of income. Malta has approximately 12,000 part-time and 1,300 full-time farmers. Approximately 100 of these are greenhouse farmers.

Malcolm's students are mostly young, aspiring farmers hoping to be greenhouse vegetable growers. While Malcolm was attending the CEAC workshop he was able to lecture from the CEAC greenhouses via Skype to one of his classes. The students were extremely excited to have their professor transferring the latest agricultural technologies, in the Maltese language, from the United States. The success of this outreach will surely serve as a blueprint for future transfer of intensive agriculture technologies from CEAC to countries throughout the world.

Mexico

Dr. Pablo Delgado Sanchez, a Research Professor of Agronomy Faculty of the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi (USLP) in Mexico. He recently visited UA-CEAC to attend to Annual Greenhouse Crop Production and Engineering Short Course, and followed by a two-week stay as visiting scholar in Dr. Chieri Kubota’s Research lab. Dr. Delgado teaches Plant Physiology, Biotechnology and Plant Propagation and conducts research on Environmental Stress Responses in Plants suing Ecophysiological and Molecular Approaches. Dr. Delgado, along with Dr. Federico Villarreal-Guerrero who is also a former graduate of ABE and UA-CEAC, serve as program coordinators in their institutes and are interested in developing collaborative programs between USLP and University of Arizona.