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THE AREQUIPA NEXUS INSTITUTE'S PHASE III KICK-OFF WORKSHOP

March 13, 2024

The Arequipa Nexus Institute celebrated the start of its Phase III with a Kick-off Workshop on March 13 in the city of Arequipa, Peru. The primary aim of the workshop was to introduce the goals and action plans for the four projects and identify ways to collaborate across the projects to increase overall impacts. The event was hosted at the UNSA’s Scientific and Technological Park. The workshop gathered 54 participants including 29 Nexus principal investigators (PIs) and Co-investigators (Co-PIs), Nexus postdocs (4), Purdue PhD students (1), and guests from Purdue (2), UNSA (15), and Descosur (3). The event started in the morning with welcoming remarks from Dr. Karen Plaut, Purdue’s Executive Vice President for Research, and was followed by statements on the Institute’s overall mission of building capacity and collaboration to support the food-energy-water systems in the Arequipa region by the Institute’s Codirectors, Drs. Lori Hoagland and Daniel Leon-Salas and MS. Dennis Macedo.

The morning agenda continued with presentations by the PIs of the four projects. Dr. Hoagland and MS Macedo presented an overview of the ‘Organic farming systems project’ and discussed their plans to conduct soil/crops studies and provide farmer training to help farmers improve their profitability and sustainability by transitioning to organic production. Dr. Luiz Brito and MS Dennis Pilares introduced the ‘Camelids project’ explaining how their project can help alpaca farmers by characterizing alpaca genetic diversity and providing training. Drs. Leon-Salas and Mauricio Postigo discussed their ‘Renewable energy project’, which will work on ways to provide cost-effective and reliable electric power for Andean communities. Finally, Drs. Jonathon Day and Carmen Franco from the ‘Regenerative tourism project’ discussed the importance of sustainable tourism and how they plan to promote this in the high route of the Colca Valley.

In the afternoon, two representatives from the local NGO Descosur, who were invited to explore possible collaborations, briefly presented the work this organization is performing in the Colca. Following this presentation, teams of the four Nexus projects gathered in individual sessions to discuss, plan and start organizing their upcoming activities in Arequipa.