Future Thinkers’ Awardee Dr Md. Abdul Kader to Enhance Taro Production Resilience in the Pacific
We are thrilled to announce Dr Md. Abdul Kader as a recipient of the inaugural Future Thinkers’ Award. His achievement showcases his dedication to academic excellence and research advancement. In Dr Kader’s words, "Receiving any award is always exciting, particularly for an active academic and researcher. It encourages and rejuvenates for further achievements and develops confidence."
Dr Md. Abdul Kader's visionary focus on dedicated research and capacity building in Pacific Island agriculture underscores the pivotal importance of this sector. His words echo this sentiment, "I am always focusing on the basic needs of the people. Food is very basic to all humans, particularly very important for developing countries' people. I was born and brought up in a developing country and observed the people's needs and suffering very closely. This inspired me to develop my academic and research career in agriculture to help the people."
The impact that Dr Kader envisions from his research is both noble and far-reaching. His work on calibrating the APSIM Taro model has the potential to increase taro yield in the Pacific region under present and future climate variability. This underpins not only food security but also economic stability for local communities. He passionately states, "If the novel APSIM Taro model is calibrated successfully, it can be a very useful tool for my own as well as HDR student’s research. It can be expanded for other Pacific crops. It will be included in my teaching curricula for showing the effects of climate change on crop yield to my students and how to tackle this by modifying soil and nutrient management."
Reflecting on the application process, Dr Kader acknowledges the helpfulness of the experience, while also recognising the scope for further refinement. His pragmatic approach to the process embodies his dedication to growth and continuous improvement.
As an ACIAR PASS-CR Future Thinkers’ Awardee, Dr Kader's commitment to addressing climate change through rigorous research is commendable. As he asserts, "PASS-CR is a very useful, important, and popular capacity-building program in the Pacific to develop future generation agriculture researchers for tackling food security issues under climate change. This program is very important as both Food Security and Climate Change are very relevant and burning issues in the region."
In conclusion, Dr Md. Abdul Kader's recognition as a recipient of the Future Thinker's Award is a testament to his unwavering dedication to advancing agricultural practices in the Pacific. His commitment to optimising taro production system, enhancing food security, and combating climate change is inspiring. The award signals the importance of collective efforts to address the critical challenges facing our world today.