Research trip to Harper for Brazilian undergraduate

Posted 14 November 2018

Karina de Fatima Cuba Silva, an undergraduate agronomy student at the College of Agriculture Luiz de Quieroz, University of São Paulo in Brazil, has been working on a project looking at using sunflower oil to mitigate drought in wheat during a four month stay at Harper Adams University.

Karina said: “I’m interested in the interaction between plants and the environment. For this reason, I found plant physiology a way to understand and study the process.

“At Harper, I’m doing a research project in crop physiology; looking at drought mitigation in wheat. We’re looking at the use of sunflower oil as a film antitranspirant.

“I’m helping PhD student Wiza Mphande with some analysis and data collection associated with his project.

“I’m repeating some of the experiments to confirm the results as there were no significant differences between the treatments during the first round of experiments, so we’re repeating to be sure.

“I chose to come to Harper because it was founded in 1901 and is addressing the challenges of natural resource management due to increase world demand for these resources and increasing world population.

“It’s a university specialising in the future development of food production, animal science, processing, engineering, land management and sustainable business.

“This educational institution has a world-leading research programmes that studies plant physiology under conditions of lack of water (the Drought Mitigation Group), which has shown substantial reductions in drought damage with the application of film antitranspirants.

“My time at Harper has been an excellent experience, both professionally and personally. Having the opportunity to study and develop research at Harper is a big achievement in my career.

“I’ve enjoyed having the chance to meet people from a lot of countries and to learn about their cultures.

“I’m really thankful for this opportunity.”