(10/03/19) BATON ROUGE, La. — During the week of Sept. 17-20, a scientific delegation from Universidade Federal Rural De Pernambuco (UFRPE), Brazil, signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with LSU and the LSU AgCenter.
The delegation was led by Emidio Cantidio de Oliveria Filho, UFRPE advisor for strategic institutional affairs, along with Thiago Goncalves Souza, coordinator of ethnobiology Ph.D. program; Carlos Boa Viagem Rabello, deputy coordinator for animal science Ph.D. program; and Rita de Cassia Carvalho, advisor for international affairs.
“While here, they visited with individual faculty to learn more about our research programs in plant pathology and crop physiology; entomology; renewable natural resources; plant, environmental and soil science; animal science; and the vet school,” said LSU AgCenter plant pathologist Lawrence Datnoff.
They were visiting the AgCenter because in 2018 Vice President Bill Richardson approved a visit to UFRPE to further establish relationships and discuss potential for collaboration per their request.
Datnoff, John Russin, retired director of the LSU AgCenter Global Network; Yi Jun Xu, professor of hydrology, LSU School of Renewable Natural Resources; and Erin Oberhaus, assistant professor in the LSU AgCenter School of Animal Science, visited UFRPE in August 2018 to support internationalization of key departments through faculty sabbaticals and graduate student exchange programs of nine to 12 months.
The Department of Plant Pathology and Crop Physiology has successful partnerships in place where three doctoral UFRPE graduate students have come to conduct a portion of their research, Datnoff said.
“This has led to six refereed journal articles in high-impact journals,” Datnoff said. “In addition, two professors, Vinson Doyle and Jong Ham, from our department have traveled to UFRPE to teach short-courses and participate in follow-up research.”
UFRPE will commit about $3.2 million over the next four years to international collaboration from the Brazilian government’s CAPES/PrInt program to support UFRPE faculty and students and elevate the international status of UFRPE.
The group estimates that as much as 75-80% will go to agricultural programs. “UFRPE wants to work with the LSU AgCenter in the U.S. to help internationalize their research programs,” Datnoff said.
Faculty from Universidade Federal Rural De Pernambuco (UFRPE), Brazil, recently visited the LSU AgCenter to learn more about the research programs and to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with LSU and the LSU AgCenter.Pictured signing the agreement, from left to right are, Bill Richardson, LSU vice president for agriculture; Matt Lee, LSU Vice Provost for Academic Programs and Support Services; and Rita de Cassia Carvalho, Advisor for International Affairs, Federal Rural University of Pernambuco, Brazil. Photo by Johnny Morgan/LSU AgCenter