Spotlight: Dr Seeseei Molimau-Samasoni
The team at the Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research is celebrating Dr Seeseei Molimau-Samasoni, our PASS-CR representative in Samoa, who has featured in a string of impressive announcements recently.
In addition to being part of the ACPIR PASS-CR team, Dr Molimau-Samasoni is Manager for the Plants and Postharvest Technologies Division at Scientific Research Organisation of Samoa.
She is the project lead for a newly contracted joint #ACIAR and #IDRC initiative aimed at remediating food loss in Pacific Island value chains. The project will use a gender sensitive, participatory approach to widen fruit and vegetable choices in the Pacific.
“Food loss is income loss for the farmer, and nutrition loss for the consumer,” Dr Molimau-Samasoni said.
“So, it’s important to address food loss to improve farmer livelihoods and consumer nutrition.”
Read about the initiative here: bit.ly/3TpoUJi.
Dr Molimau-Samasoni and PASS-CR Program Coordinator Dr Bree Wilson were awarded a Crawford Fund grant last month to lead plant pathology training to scientists in Samoa. The focus will be on isolating and identifying causative agents of sweetpotato diseases during crop growth and postharvest.
The consumption and production of sweetpotato in Samoa is growing and this training will contribute to improving food security through new knowledge of diseases in Samoa including a diagnostic protocol and basic disease manual.
The research will complement an ACIAR pilot project: Improving root crop resilience and biosecurity in Pacific Island Countries and Australia (ACIAR HORT 2018/195).
Read the announcement here: https://bit.ly/3oDiOae
As a Meryl Williams Fellow, Dr Molimau-Samasoni also recently secured research funding through the ARSF3-ECR program to identify symptoms associated with the post-harvest rot of Taro in Samoa.
Read all about it here: https://bit.ly/3RTtlej.
Each initiative will directly help to strengthen nutrition, food systems, and health outcomes in the Pacific. Congratulations Seeseei!