(left to right) Karen Plaut, Lori Hoagland, Daniel Leon-Salas
HLA Professor and Co-Director of the Arequipa Nexus Institute, Dr. Lori Hoagland, traveled to Peru with Drs. Karen Plaut (Executive Vice President for Research), Juan Diego Velazquez (Director of Latin American Programs), Daniel Leon-Salas (Associate Prof. in the Polytechnic Institute and Nexus Co-Director), and Rosa Cossio (Nexus Program Manager). The team started in Lima where they met with the president and other top officials at Concytec (Peru’s NSF), the rector and other top officials at the University of San Ingnacio de Loyola, and the founder and managers of Amanatari, a non-profit dedicating to helping people in the Amazon. The group discussed ways to build on existing collaborations and develop new opportunities to collaborate with faculty at Purdue. Next the team traveled to Arequipa to formally celebrate and kick-off the third phase of funding for the Nexus titled ‘Promoting Sustainable high-Andean Communities in the Colca Canyon’. The Arequipa Nexus Institute is a partnership between faculty at Purdue and the University of San Augustin (UNSA).
The team taking a quick break while hiking up to some pre-Incan ruins on the last day of the two-week trip
In Arequipa, Hoagland was joined by HLA post-doc Dr. Ada Martinez and PhD student Henrique Feiler. After attending a Nexus kick-off workshop, the team headed high into the Andes mountains to interview farmers, collect soils and scout for pests in support of their Nexus sub-project titled ‘Building Soils, Communities and Profits with Organic Farming Systems’. Ada led the interviews speaking in a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, while Lori, Henrique, Rosa Cossio and Dennis Macedo (UNSA Professor and Nexus Co-Director) collected soils and inspected plants.
More photos from the trip can be viewed in this gallery.