Updates on PAEPARD Activities in Mauritius, April - May 2012

Breadfruit Festival in Mauritius

PAEPARD Facilitators sharing information on 
the project activities in Mauritius

The Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security, in collaboration with the Agricultural Research and Extension Unit (AREU) organised a breadfruit festival ("La Fete du Fruit a pain") from 25-27 April 2012 at the Farmers' Training School, Wooton. On this occasion, several activities were proposed to the public, which included a culinary competition, demonstrations on breadfruit propagation techniques, breadfruit processing and value-addition, public lectures on several key topics on breadfruits, and there was also an exhibition on breadfruit by some of the organisations involved in the breadfruit sector in Mauritius. In-line with this event, breadfruit village was also inaugurated at Pamplemousses (a region in the north of Mauritius) on 24th April 2012.Among the different exhibitions, there was an exhibit by the Food and Agricultural Research Council (FARC) and PAEPARD, whereby information on the PAEPARD Project in Mauritius were given to the public.

More information on the Breadfruit Festival in Mauritius can be accessed on this link.

Work session - 10th May 2012

The objective of this work session was to prioritize research areas from the ones identified during the previous work session. 

The prioritization process was explained to the participants by the facilitators:

• From the 10 identified Research areas, the consortium needed to prioritize at most 5 research areas, according to their importance and complexity with respect to the local context. 
• A prioritization questionnaire was designed and participants were required to rate the research areas accordingly 
• The prioritization questionnaire and the list of research areas were provided to each participant 
• Starting from the first research area to the last on the list, each one of them was rated according to the different criteria.

By the end of the work session 5 Research areas were prioritised.Some pictures of the work session can be viewed in the following Slide Show:

Work Session - 16th May 2012

The picture is an example showing how the research questions
were generated formulated for each of the 5 research areas

The work session organized on 16th May 2012 was a follow-up to the work session held on 10th May 2012, whereby 5 research areas were prioritized.The objective of this work session was to formulate research questions that would be developed into concept notes.Participants were explained by the facilitators about how to formulate the research questions under each research area. For each of the research area, there was a central question, secondary questions, and tertiary questions. From all these questions that were generated, a research title was formulated for each research area. 

By the end of the work session 5 Research titles were formulated under each Prioritized Research areas.In the next workshop that would be organized in June 2012, concept notes would be developed for each Research title.

Presentation at the IAALD Africa Chapter Conference

Nawsheen Hosenally during the presentation

A paper on the wiki of the Mauritius Breadfruit Sector Consortium (supported by PAEPARD) was presented at the IAALD Africa Chapter Conference 

held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 21-23 May 2012.

Presentation: "The use of ICTs to facilitate collaboration in a Multi-Stakeholder Partnership: A case study of the Mauritius Breadfruit Sector Consortium" by N.Hosenally and K.Bheenick
Click here to read full paper