Activities in Asia
Bangladesh | China | India | Japan | Malaysia | Philippines | Thailand | Vietnam
The following summarizes experience and expertise in Asia at Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. For further information, please contact Deanna Behring, director of international programs, by telephone at 863-0249 or via e-mail.
Bangladesh
Dr. Ed Rajotte (Entomology) has been working in Bangladesh since 1997 in vegetable integrated pest management research via the IPM CRSP. In addition, Dr. Carolyn Sachs (Ag Economics and Rural Sociology) also works on this project evaluating the sociological implications of pest management systems.
China (People's Republic of China)
The college is a member of the University Consortium for Chinese Agriculture (UCCA), a network of twelve U.S. land-grant institutions and seven Chinese universities. The purpose of the consortium is to enhance opportunities for mutual development of agricultural science and technology and promote joint research, education, and other projects. For more information, see the UCCA Web site.
The Penn State link with what is now South China Agricultural College dates back to 1907 when Professor George Groff went to Lingnan, China, as a middle school teacher. Professor Groff's work eventually led to the development of the college, and the two institutions cooperated and exchanged students until World War II. In 1980, the program was renewed with funding from USDA. Dr. Jonathan Lynch (Horticulture) is actively engaged with his Chinese colleagues at SCAC and has just been awarded a prestigious McKnight Foundation grant for joint soybean research. Additional areas of possible collaboration include dairy production and nutrition, horticulture, and plant pathology.
The School of Forestry also has an MOU with the Northeast Forestry University of Harbin, dating back to 1986.
John Carlson (School of Forest Resources) was appointed adviser to the National Laboratory of Forest Ecology, Northeastern Forestry University, Harbin, PRC, in 1994. Dr. Carlson also initiated a collaboration with the Beijing Forestry University with a visit to BFU in June 2006. The visit was hosted by Professor Xinli Xia and BFU President Dr. Yin Weilun. This led to funding of the collaboration through the Chinese national 948 program that supports opportunities for Chinese researchers to access new technologies abroad. In addition to research, the 948 grant supports scientific exchanges, with Dr. Carlson visiting Beijing Forestry University again in 2008 and Professor Xia and her students to visit the School of Forest Resources at Penn State in 2009.
Tom Bruening (Ag and Extension Education) worked in China from 1995 to 1997 on a project sponsored by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). During his three summers in China, Dr. Bruening worked with six technical schools in Northwest China to strengthen agricultural education offerings through improved teaching methodology and curriculum development. Through this FAO program, new approaches to ag education have been adopted in China's 364 ag schools, reaching approximately 875,000 students. The findings from this research will be presented at the International Conference on Agricultural Science and Technology, held in Beijing, November 2001.
In 1994, Al Turgeon, Lynn Hoffman, Dennis Calvin, and Jan Pruss traveled to China at the invitation of Dr. Cheng Wu, vice president of Beijing Agricultural University. (Dr. Cheng went on to become the director of science and technology in the Ministry of Agriculture.) The purpose of the visit was to exchange information on sustainable agriculture systems. Penn State faculty conducted workshops on expert systems and integrated crop management at Beijing Agricultural University and at South China Agricultural University at the invitation of Dr. Lo, vice chancellor for research.
Penn State faculty Gary Petersen and Eric Warner have received a three-year NASA grant to integrate crop productivity modeling with remote sensing estimated canopy biophysical variables. The work will include validation of the estimated canopy properties and yield estimates from rice fields near Nanjing, China. The Penn State researchers will collaborate with the Soil Science Research Institute, housed in Nanjing, to conduct the investigation. The collaboration is another element to an ongoing relationship between Penn State and the Soil Science Research Institute.
India
In April 2001, William Lamont, codirector for the Center for Plasticulture (Horticulture), Tim Elkner (Capital Region, Penn State Cooperative Extension), and Swamy Anantheswaran (Food Science) visited India in the wake of the devastating earthquake that hit Gujarat in January, destroying most of the university buildings and resulting in thousands of deaths. The group had meetings to discuss the idea of building low-cost shelters/greenhouses for use in the earthquake-ravaged regions of Bhuj and Bachau and to explore opportunities for collaborative projects between Penn State and Gujarat Agricultural University. As an outcome of that visit, Penn State and the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation won a grant from the U.S.-India Forum to organize an international workshop on plasticulture in India in 2004.
During Secretary of Agriculture Sam Hayes's visit to India in 2000, the college signed a letter of cooperation with Gujarat Agricultural University. Dr. Anantheswaran accompanied Secretary Hayes and is exploring possible projects related to food processing.
Japan
Matthew Kaplan (Ag and Extension Education) received funding from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership to conduct the Japan-U.S. Partnerships to Promote Intergenerational Programs and Practices program, a two-year initiative aimed at promoting collaboration between intergenerational practitioners in the United States and Japan.
In the first year of the grant (2006), 290 people attended an international conference held in Tokyo. The event was organized by the Japan Intergenerational Unity Association (JIUA) in conjunction with Penn State and more than twenty partnering organizations and agencies in Japan. The following year, ten intergenerational professionals from Japan took part in a study tour of model intergenerational programs in the United States.
Malaysia
Wayne Myers (School of Forest Resources) is conducting a collaboration in remote sensing to enhance capabilities for managing tropical coastal environments at Koleg Universiti Sains Dan Teknologi, Malaysia. He has conducted a series of workshops, seminars, and cooperative research in Malaysia.
Philippines
Ed Rajotte (Entomology) has been working on the USAID IPM CRSP in Philippines since 1994 in collaborating with scientists from the Philippine Rice Research Institute and the International Rice Research Institute to develop new integrated pest management tactics for rice-vegetable rotational systems.
Thailand
In 2004, Liwang Cui (Entomology) received a five-year training grant from the Fogarty International Center titled "Enhancing Vivax Malaria Research in Thailand." Thailand, as do many other malaria-endemic countries, still faces the problem of increased burden of malaria--especially vivax malaria, which has been on the rise and has become the predominant malaria species in many regions of the country. Unfortunately, there is a deficiency of scientists who focus their research on vivax malaria. In realizing this need, Penn State faculty will train young scientists (doctoral students and postdocs) to work on vivax malaria. The training site will be based in the Faculty of Sciences, Mahidol University, one of the best universities in this country. The research projects will cover parasite culture, parasite inter- and intraspecies interactions, population genetics, and molecular biology of the parasites. Mentors involved in this training are experts in malaria research from four U.S. institutions and two Thai institutions.
Dr. John Carlson was appointed scientific adviser, ASEAN Forest Tree Seed Center, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1999.
Vietnam
In 2002, Dr. Ed Rajotte, in collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, explored methods to assess IPM usage in Vietnam.
