Applying Peanut CRSP Research to USAID Initiatives
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The Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program (Peanut CRSP or PCRSP) supports joint research, technology development, and capacity development in eleven African and Latin American countries to boost productivity of peanut crops and increase the economic advancement of small-scale farmers. The Program has 21 active projects with diverse research themes. Presently, Peanut CRSP is paying special attention to the management, prevention, and consequences of aflatoxin. Program research has demonstrated that this toxin - a common contamination risk in many foods in developing countries, such as peanuts and maize - is associated with suppressed immunity, decreased nutritional status, and elevated HIV incidence.
For the past 10 years, Peanut CRSP has sought to achieve better production, markets, and health for consumers in developing countries. Many of the program's successes have required the integration of agriculture into public health goals, providing models with global application. At this seminar, Peanut CRSP Director Tim Williams discussed current research results and program expertise, focusing on how this information can be used by USAID’s Bureaus for Food Security and Global Health initiative.
Speakers
Tim Williams
Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program
For 40 years, Tim Williams has strived to achieve public health and development goals through research on peanut science and the peanut value chain. In 1980, he joined the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) in India to lead peanut research on drought, plant nutrition, yield potential, and genotype/environment interactions. After 9 years in India, he spent 6 years at the ICRISAT Sahelian Center in Niger researching peanut, cowpea, and millet cropping systems.
Tim joined the University of Georgia and Peanut Collaborative Research Support Program (Peanut CRSP) in 1995 and became Director in 1997. He has focused on streamlining research management and on the market and utilization aspects of the peanut industry. His current professional interests span the entire peanut sector and opportunities to involve agriculture in the realization of health. He has developed a strong interest in mycotoxins, particularly in the prevention and chronic health effects of human aflatoxicosis. His research has established that aflatoxin is immuno-suppressive and is exacerbating the HIV epidemic, vitamin deficiencies, and malaria in Africa. Under Tim’s leadership, Peanut CRSP has become a world leader in documenting human exposure to and the public health consequences of aflatoxin.
Tim received his Doctor of Philosophy in Crop Science from the University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1979. He has authored over 130 publications in scientific journals and as book chapters. He is responsible for numerous inventions placed in the public domain, including a soil moisture probe that he co-invented in 1985. This device was selected by NASA for the most recent Mars probe to confirm the existence of water on that planet.
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