The annual World Food Prize conference opens today in Des Moines, providing a setting for Purdue to launch its post-harvest initiative against food waste. The initiative is a bundle of projects to prevent food loss after harvest, improve nutrition, support food entrepreneurs and build agricultural value chains, says the university.
The exhibit in Des Moines will highlight two major projects, to reduce crop spoilage through sealed storage bags that are easy for farmers to use and to develop on-farm crop drying, storage and processing techniques.
Purdue says it is the only university with two winners of the World Food Prize on its faculty. Philip Nelson won the prize in 2007 for work on aseptic processing of fresh fruits and vegetables and Gebisa Ejeta in 2009 for development of sorghum hybrids resistant to drought and Striga weed.