Research project sustainable avocado cultivation

Within the FORQLAB project, master's an d bachelor's students from four green colleges and MERY University in Kenya are working together on a series of graduation assignments about food loss/waste and food quality in the Kenyan avocado value chain.

In the graduation assignments, students, teachers and partners from the education and working field will take a close look at avocado cultivation in both central and western Kenya. The students will look for technical and institutional solutions throughout the avocado chain to minimize the current wastage. Now, much is still lost after harvest. The quality of avocados also needs to improve. 

Master students from Van Hall Larenstein Univeristy of Applied Sciences visited Eosta to learn about preventing food waste when importing and selling organic Kenyan avocados. At Eosta, waste is minimalized by selling avocados at different maturity stages; from hard green to triggered and ripened. Avocados not suitable for sale are used for oil.

We also talked about transport, packaging, control atmosphere, quality and ripeness stages in Kenya. Also about lab testing, the importance of dry matter and nutrients in avocados and the Felix device that measures the dry matter content in an avocado in no time.

Message from a student: 
"I thank you for the insightful orientation you gave us. Personally, I came out a better person than I came in"