An employee with the Rwanda Agricultural Board (Rab) has won the 2014 Potato Taste Challenge Prize. The award, which goes with $20,000 (Rwf13.5m) was won by Joseph Bigirimana and his team – which will be used to pursue pilot interventions aimed at testing whether controlling ‘antestia bug’ will reduce potato taste defect in coffee. Bigirimana will partner with Dr. Dick Walyaro and Dr. Theodore Asiimwe (also from Rab) in his potato taste mitigation efforts, a statement from the parastatal says. The single insect is said to cause the mysterious “potato taste” defect plaguing coffee in Africa’s Great Lakes region. In Rwanda, the “antestia bug” (antestiopsis orbitalis) not only destroys up to 38 per cent of coffee crops, but likely causes the taste defect which costs the Rwandan coffee sector millions of dollars per year, causes huge losses in Burundi, and harms the Democratic Republic of Congo’s nascent coffee industry, according to the statement. Over the past years, the Government of Rwanda, local institutions of higher learning and international partners have worked together to identify the cause and possible detection and mitigation techniques for potato taste. To help source potential solutions to the challenge, the government organised a Coffee Research Symposium in March 2014, which attracted over 150 experts across the region. Participants identified the need for practical solutions to combat the negative effects of potato taste on the East African coffee market. To answer this call, a US non-profit the Global Knowledge Initiative (GKI), in partnership with the Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) – organiser of the prestigious Cup of Excellence coffee competition – designed a Potato Taste Challenge Prize to support an innovative technology or technique to detect or mitigates potato taste. A number of ACE member coffee companies donated money to support this prize. “An international Technical Review Committee selected Bigirimana’s proposal from numerous high-level submissions. Bigirimana’s proposal focuses on studying the effects of pyrethroid organic pesticide on antestia bugs, and its subsequent effects,” the organisers said in a statement yesterday. Bigirimana will use baseline and post-intervention cuppings to provide evidence of potato taste prevention. If successful, this could provide evidence of a method of mitigating potato taste through antestia control measures. “Joseph Bigirimana will have a global network of researchers and private sector firms ready to support his efforts,” the statement added. Since 2012, GKI has built a network of partners dedicated to identifying the causes of and treatments for potato taste through its LINK (Learning and Innovation Network for Knowledge and Solutions) programme. Through this network, representatives from the University of Rwanda, CIRAD in France, Icipe in Kenya, Seattle University, Michigan State University, and the University of California, Riverside in the US, and numerous other institutions have shared knowledge on antestia bugs, chemical and biological profiles of potato taste, and variables that predict the taste defect’s presence. As Bigirimana evaluates the efficacy of his pest management strategy on potato taste mitigation over the next two years, ACE and GKI are committed to support his team in project implementation and monitor and evaluate the results. GKI will also work to connect Bigirimana’s team with other complimentary initiatives and ensure his work finds support from others striving to identify ways to eliminate potato taste, it said. “Integrating Bigirimana’s work with that of the East African universities and international partners will bring the Great Lakes region one step closer to eliminating the antestia bug affliction and preserving its global reputation for exceptional coffee.”
