The Tribune

THE College of the Bahamas Poultry Research Unit is “very important” to the efforts to enhance local agriculture, Alfred Sears said.

The COB council president was speaking during a site inspection of the PRU, located at the Gladstone Road Agricultural Complex.

The PRU was designed to operate as a research nerve centre where experiments are conducted in sustainable broiler production, agriculture, organic fertilisers and biodiesel.

These are all areas with the potential to improve the country’s self-sufficiency and areas in which the college has demonstrated its responsiveness to national needs, Mr Sears said.

“This is an important facility that provides an opportunity for the College of the Bahamas to make an investment in research,” he said.

“We need to identify faculty members with a passion for research in the area of agronomy, animal husbandry and general science.

“It also has the potential with some development to provide training for the wider community to encourage backyard farming, animal husbandry, while increasing the clinical experiences of the students.”

With funding from the Freedom Foundation in 2004 and land provided by the Ministry of Agriculture, the PRU was mandated to develop small production models to improve the nutritional value of broiler chickens and reduce the environmental impact of intensive poultry farming.

The unit was also tasked with providing case studies, outreach materials and scientific publications that address the technical, economic and environmental impacts of broiler farming in the Bahamas.

Interim dean of the faculty of pure and applied sciences, Lionel Johnson, said opportunities are also being explored for further partnerships as the foundation for increased community awareness and education.

“There are a number of activities that spin off from the poultry production initiative including chicken processing, biodiesel and composting.

“Additionally, we need to start the initiatives with the community and there are plans written for the seminars on poultry production. We need to commence those and restart the poultry production in the schools. The research arm is very important and we should seek to provide real data to help underwrite the programmes we have about local agriculture,” he said.

According to college president Dr Betsy Vogel-Boze, the PRU has the potential to become a cornerstone for the impending University of the Bahamas.

“The Poultry Research Unit has the potential to be a primer science and innovation laboratory for the Bahamas, not just in poultry but also in biofuels, composting and agriculture. It should be a teaching, research and production facility and I have great hopes for this centre,” she said.

The facility has a silo, housing capacity for 24,500 birds, as well as a ventilation/evaporation cooling system and other ancillary buildings for agricultural and biological research and experimentation.

Dr Patricia Grant-Johnson, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry, Environmental and Life Sciences, also accompanied the council on the visit.

No stranger to the unit, Dr Grant-Johnson led research into biodiesel production that used cooking oil from various fast food establishments.

“We collected the used oil from the restaurants and used a jean like material to filer the oil because there would be debris within it.

“The system worked by using methanol and a lye mix that was put into the oil. It separates the fatty acids from the glycerol end product that settles at the bottom. The biodiesel that was produced was used to power the PRU’s field vehicle,” she said.