Farida Belksami Algerian Borlaug

Farida Belksami: Borlaug Fellow at AIGR

AS A MEMBER OF THE FACULTY AT MOHAMED EL BACHIR EL IBRAHIMI UNIVERSITY IN

ALGERIA, FARIDA BELKSAMI HAD DEVELOPED A KEEN INTEREST IN ANIMAL HEALTH

AND PRODUCTION. WHEN A COLLEAGUE TOLD HER THAT THE RESEARCH FOCUS OF THE

2019 USDA FOREIGN AGRICULTURAL SERVICE BORLAUG INTERNATIONAL AGRICULTURAL

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM WAS IN EXACTLY THOSE AREAS, SHE

SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY.

She submitted her application and soon learned she Belksami leapt into her work at AIGR. Mentored by had won a prestigious Borlaug Fellowship. Based on Goetsch, she spent most of her 15-week stint on research her research interests, the Borlaug program paired trials using three breeds of hair sheep to evaluate the her with her future mentor, Dr. Arthur Goetsch, of “Effects of Nutritional Plane Before and After Breeding on the American Institute for Goat Research (AIGR) Reproduction Performance.” As she cared for the animals, at Langston University. They corresponded and together she collected data for the initial phase of her research, which designed a research program. will end at lambing in the spring 2020. She was particularly In August 2019, Belksami arrived in the U.S. and at Langston University. Her first impressions were somewhat overwhelming. Belksami had never traveled to the U.S., and her ideas of America had been formed by movies, television, and news. The real U.S. was not exactly what she anticipated. For one thing, it was bigger. “There is a lot of land and big houses,” she recalled. The U.S. was also more rural than she had expected – in the media, she had seen mostly cities and urban areas. Langston University and the region around it were quite different from her bustling home of Bordj Bou Arréridj, a northern Algerian city of 200,000 inhabitinterested in using body condition scoring in a research setting and learning more about small ruminant nutrition. And with the help of AIGR scientists, Belksami honed her laboratory and other skills in the areas of calorimetry, feedstuff fiber analysis, general laboratory skills, and RNA extraction. In addition, having expressed a desire in her fellowship application to delve into statistical analysis techniques, including modeling and regression, Belksami was especially grateful when Dr. Terry Gipson stepped in to provide training sessions using the SAS statistical software suite and the R statistical analysis environment. ants. Fortunately, language was Borlaug fellows are encouraged to not a surprise – in addition to her travel during their program, and native Arabic, Belksami speaks fluent Farida Belksami records data from tri-axial Belksami took advantage of her French and English. accelerometers used to measure rumination opportunities, (continues on page 40) and lying/standing time.

“If I could have stayed longer, I would have gained even more benefit; I’ll miss the work here.” — FARIDA BELKSAMI

Farida Belksami greets a hair sheep used in her research.

The Borlaug Fellowship Program

Honoring Norman E. Borlaug, the American agronomist, humanitarian, and Nobel laureate known as the “father of the Green Revolution,” the Borlaug Fellowship Program promotes food security and economic growth by providing training and collaborative research opportunities to fellows from developing and middle-income countries. Typically, Borlaug fellows are scientists, researchers, or policymakers in the early or middle stages of their careers. Each fellow works one-on-one with a mentor at a U.S. university, research center, or government agency, usually for 8 to 12 weeks. The mentor will later visit the fellow’s home institution to continue collaboration. Farida Belksami is the third Borlaug fellow hosted by the American Institute for Goat Research at Langston University, following two fellows from Kenya in 2014.

visiting small ruminant farms in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas as well as USDA facilities at Booneville, Arkansas, and the Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska. Along with Goetsch, she also traveled to Des Moines, Iowa, to attend the annual World Food Prize Symposium, where they met other Borlaug fellows and scientists from around the world.

When her time at AIGR came to an end, Belksami felt her research objectives and expectations for the program had been met. Still, it had gone quickly. “If I could have stayed longer, I would have gained even more benefit; I’ll miss the work here.” Back home, she resumed her teaching duties, forged ahead with her research, and continued studying statistical analysis. In fall 2020, as the last part of the Borlaug Fellowship Program, she will be joined in Algeria by Goetsch to help her complete the Borlaug project, meet with her colleagues, and discuss future endeavors. “My hope,” Belksami said, “is to keep in touch with the AIGR team and work with them on other projects, even from Algeria.”

For more information, please contact Dr. Arthur Goetsch, arthur. goetsch@langston.edu.