Dr. Alima Arzouma Bandaogo, a new USDA-FAS Borlaug visiting scholar from Burkina Faso in West Africa has recently joined our Soil, Water and, Bioenergy Resources Program. Currently, she is employed at the National Institute of Environment and Agronomic Research as a senior Soil Scientist since 2014. Alima has focused her research on integrated soil fertility management because accelerated soil degradation is one of the major problems that is affecting smallholder farmers in Africa, including Burkina Faso. Agriculture in Burkina Faso is characterized by minimum investment, poor crop yields, and low farm income as the soils are poor quality with low soil organic matter and nutrient contents, especially nitrogen and phosphorus. Almost 85% of the population in Burkina Faso is involved in agriculture for growing rice, corn, sorghum, and millet as staple food crops.
Alima received the highly competitive prestigious USDA-FAS Borlaug fellowship to work in the Soil, Water, and Bioenergy Resources Program of The Ohio State University South Centers for her professional development under the mentorship of Dr. Rafiq Islam. Her training focus is to acquire science-based knowledge to address integrated soil fertility management practices for economic crop production in Burkina Faso under climate change effects. She is eager to learn more about new soil and crop analytical techniques, soil quality, cover crops and nutrient recycling, crop rotation and tillage systems, greenhouse gas emissions, field experiments, sampling procedures and multivariate statistics, manuscript and grant writing techniques.
Since her arrival in September to the United States, she has attended the World Food Prize Award Conference in Des Moines, Iowa in October 2017. As part of her research achievement, she has delivered a scientific presentation at the American Society of Agronomy /Crop Science Society of America/Soil Science Society of America Annual International Meeting in Tampa, Florida in October 2017. Moreover, she has been selected as one of the invited scholars to deliver a poster presentation at the International Scholar J-1 Research Exposition on November 17, 2017, at The Ohio State University President’s Office. She will attend and participate at the Licking County Field Day on November 16, 2017 and the Ohio No-Till Conference on December 6, 2017 in Plain City to learn more about no-till farming, crop rotation, cover crops, and nutrient and manure management practices.