At Zamorano we encourage applied research, and that is why our fourth year students carry out a graduation project and write a thesis. These research projects focus on issues related to the environment and development, plant breeding, animal husbandry, food industrialization and agribusiness. As in previous years, the best thesis of every department is selected from the more than 200 theses prepared by the Class of 2011. The following are the five winning theses.
Christian René Tórrez Galeano (Nicaraguan) in the Department of Agribusiness Management based his graduation project on a software application to weekly update the latest trends in the US fruit and vegetable market, using the Gallo’s Agricultural Market Intelligence System (GAMIS). The first version of GAMIS was created at Zamorano in 2010. It is a commercial intelligence website dealing with fresh fruits and vegetables exported to the United States. GAMIS provides technical information about production, postharvest management, daily prices, daily sales volumes and trend graphs. Torrez developed a program that automates these activities and presents updated information to users.
Karla Gabriela Manzanarez Paz (Honduran) developed the project, “Prediction of cetane number of biodiesel fuel made from piñon (Jatropha curcas) and African palm (Elaeis guineensis) through gas chromatography.” It was the Department of Food Agroindustry’s best graduation project. The project evaluated three equations Bamgboye and Hansen 2008, Gopinath et al. 2009 and Knothe et al. 1998 - in order to predict the cetane number of biodiesel made from two varieties of piñon (Cabo Verde and Hindu Salvadoran), as well as biodiesel made from the fatty acids of the African palm using gas chromatography. The Bamgboye and Hansen equation successfully predicted the cetane number of biodiesel made from palm oil and piñon. Specialized in plant breeding at the Agronomy Department, Octavio Augusto Menocal Sandoval (Nicaraguan) evaluated the specificity of Anthonomus tenebrosus (Coleóptera: Curculionidae), a potential biological
control agent of Solanum viarum in Florida. Solanum Viarum Dunal (Solanaceae) is an evergreen shrub that is native to South America and is considered invasive in Florida. It is found in several states in the southern U.S. and covers an area greater than 404,000 ha. The project concluded that A. tenebrosus presents high specificity, but recommended further specificity testing using other plants of the Solanaceae family.
Jorge Fernando Betancourth and Gabriel Cáceres Gutiérrez (both Honduran) in the Department of Science and Agropecuary Production conducted research on animal husbandry and used two hormonal protocols for superovulation and embryo transfer in dairy cows, using Holstein, Brown Swiss and Jersey cows. They divided the 10 cows into two groups and applied two hormonal protocols. They concluded that under conditions at Zamorano, a specific product is recommended for the superovulation of dairy cows.
Nivardo Cerceño Gómez (Panamanian) in the Department of Development and Environment analyzed the impact of basic infrastructure on the energy consumption levels in rural and indigenous Panamanian households. He measured the economic impact of access to basic infrastructure (water, electricity and telephone) on the per capita consumption of these households. He was able to demonstrate that, as the number of assets in a household increases, so does per capita energy consumption. The study will help contribute to sound decision making and implementation of mechanisms that will allow optimum basic infrastructure investment in priority rural and indigenous areas of Panama.
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