Martin Henry
A TWO-WEEK training institute on climate and health is due to wind down tomorrow. It is being hosted by the Physics Department of the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona campus. On June 9, I wrote about the distinguished work that Professor Anthony Chen's Climate Studies Group was doing. Chen has since been awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal in recognition of his scientific work.
Climate change is creating conditions for epidemiological changes. The Climate Studies Group, for instance, has established a clear link between increasing cases of dengue in the Caribbean and rising temperatures with increasing rainfall serving as a kind of bridge linking the two.
We are just now wrestling with an upsurge of leptospirosis linked to prolonged rainfall which has pushed more rats, the principal carriers, out of their field habitats and into closer proximity with humans. The UWI's 'Eye on Science' page in The Gleaner has run excellent feature articles on both climate change and dengue (3/11) and on rats and leptospirosis (10/11).
This paper and other sections of the media have been providing extensive basic scientific and medical infor-mation on leptospirosis and lots more science and technology (S&T)-related stories than in the past. This column is pulled largely from a string of Gleaner stories.
SCIENCE AND CROPS
Across the road from the UWI, during what is supposed to be Science Month - all very quiet - the SRC is conducting a Tissue Culture Technology training course this week. Tissue culture has already revolutionised the banana industry, can do the same for yam cultivation and is set to improve the production of a range of other crops.
"Chris'mus a come." The Science Research Council (SRC) has done the research and development for building a whole sorrel industry away from just the Christmas drink. And round the year cultivars are now available. I learned this, not in scientific circles in Kingston, but from rural people. The same sort of research and development for industry building around prime Jamaican primary products needs to be done.
A recent Farmers Weekly page announced "New technology found to improve crop yield". "The Christiana Potato Growers Association, with the help of international aid agencies," the rural report said, "has devised a new scientific method of improving the quality, size and quantity of crops grown on its farm in Devon, Manchester. The modern farming technique uses tissue culture and greenhouse technologies to grow crops in an enclosed and controlled environment."
HELP FOR GINGER FARMERS
The same page announced: "Prime Minister wants strategy for ethanol production" as part of an integrated, multi-product sugar industry. And 'Sweet potato festival in Manchester ...' The sweet potato is both a fabulous fibre and nutrients food and a raw material for a whole heap of products. George Washington Carver developed dozens of products from the sweet potato and more from the peanut.
The S&T people now have to help ginger farmers. Another story on the Farmers Weekly page was reporting a 'mysterious disease' affecting the crop. The SRC has identified those powerfully pungent oleoresins which make Jamaican ginger the best in the world, but the crop has been taking a beating from disease.
ABSENCE OF VENTURE CAPITAL
One of the recurring complaints about taking S&T out of the lab and off to market is the absence of venture capital financing. Last Friday's Financial Gleaner (Nov. 11) carried the story 'Entrepreneurs tap into Jamaican culture'. Sonya Dunstan and others got help from the SRC in product formulation and business and marketing assistance from the Jamaica Business Development Centre (JBDC). Only two days before, Wednesday Business was reporting that the progressive Aubyn Hill had launched a US$10 million venture capital fund to marry people with the ideas and people with the money.
Sonya Dunstan and the other people featured in the Financial Gleaner story are little. Another story in the same edition reported Ting, a great drink from the humble grapefruit which used to rot in fields, produced by the big D&G winning yet another international award at the recent ZestFest in Texas. Ting, pushing 30, is seriously cargoed with gold medals.
From food to fibre optics and telecommunications. Another of the country's now seven universities, the aggressive and progressive UCC, partnering with DC Digital and CVM TV, has just launched a hi-tech distance learning programme. Lawyer Paulwell, the 'exuberant' S&T Minister was announcing in a technology debate in Parliament that the fibre link connection from the first licence granted last year is due to land in Jamaica this week bringing us more high speed Internet access. With a capacity of 80 gigs per second, only Brazil will be ahead of us in the entire region, Paulwell bragged.
PS: This month marks the end of my 18th year in the column business.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
