Keith Tomlins: Controlling waste in tuber crops for a better economy

For 700 million people in Africa and the Far-East, yams and cassava represent important crops for food security and as a source of income. The trouble is, losses during harvesting and processing are exceptionally high—at the level of 60% for yams and 30% for cassava. A new EU-funded research project called GRATITUDE aims at reducing such waste and losses. Keith Tomlins, a researcher in Food Science at the University of Greenwich's Natural Resources Institute in the UK, is the coordinator of the project since it started in January 2012. He tells youris.com about how he is planning to improve staple crop yields in Vietnam, Thailand, Ghana, and Nigeria, with the help of local scientists together with Dutch and Portuguese partners.

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