Dr. Daniel N. Sila 
       
      Affiliation: Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) 
      Profession: Lecturer, Department of Food Science and Technology 
       
      Key Qualifications 
      Holds  a  PhD  in  Bioscience  Engineering  from  KU  Leuven,  Belgium.  Has  over  10  years  of 
      experience in plant based foods work, particularly fruits and vegetables at research level and 
      industrial  set  up.  Has  over  25  publications  in  international  peer  review  journals  of  high 
      impact and has presented in many international fora. Key strengths which highlight the 
      major assignments pursued in the 5 years include being a project leader in VLIR-UOS funded 
      beans  project,  Aus  AID  funded  amaranth  project,  Mango  JKUAT  project,  Cactus  JKUAT 
      project. Is currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Food Science and Technology and 
      the Chairman of the Department of Agricultural Resource Economics (JKUAT). 
                           
       A Kenyan University Becomes a Centre of Excellence for Legume Research in East Africa 
                 through VLIR-UOS Own Initiative Funding 
                           
      Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) is one of the 23 public 
      universities in Kenya. It was started as a middle level college in 1981 before it grew into a 
      fully pledged university through the JKUAT Act of 1994. It is the 5th largest public university 
      in Kenya seeking global excellence in Training, Research and Innovation for Development. It 
      was initially meant to train graduates majorly in agricultural sciences before other Faculties 
      were  embraced:  Science,  Engineering,  Biotechnology  Research,  Energy  and  Environment 
      Technology,  Computer  Science  and  Information  Technology,  Tropical  Medicine  and 
      Infectious  Diseases,  Human  Resource  Development,  Architecture  and  Building  Sciences 
      (Figure 1). The main university campus has about 15,000 registered students drawn from all 
      income  classes  and  gender.  The  Faculty  of  Agriculture  is  well  established  and  has  four 
      departments: Horticulture, Food Science and Technology, Agricultural Resource Economics 
      and Land Resources and Animal Health. The Department of Food Science and Technology  
      (FST)  offers  training  in  the  areas  of  food  science  and  technology,  nutritional  sciences, 
      postharvest  technology  and  food  service  and  hospitality  management  to  about  300 
      students.  The  training  is  offered  at  both  undergraduate  and  postgraduate  levels.  The 
      Department,  therefore,  aims  at  producing  well  trained  graduates,  provided  with  the 
      knowledge and skills, to meet the manpower requirements of the food industry, postharvest 
      handling systems and nutritional aspects depending on the degree program one enrolls in. 
      The Department is, indeed, the only one of its kind in any University in the East, Central and 
      Southern  African  regions,  offering  specialized  training  in  Postharvest  Science  and 
      Technology. The Department carries out both basic and applied research, geared particularly 
      towards solving local problems.  
       
                                             
           Figure 1. The Main Gate of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology 
        
       The department of Food Science and Technology at JKUAT is the home for 7 IUPFOOD VLIR-
       UOS funded alumni students. These includes 2 KU Leuven PhD alumni from the Laboratory of 
       Food Technology (Dr. Daniel Sila PhD 2007 and Dr. Ann Munyaka PhD 2011), a JKUAT PhD 
       graduate (Dr. Michael Wawire PhD 2013) who carried part of his work at the Laboratory of 
       Food Technology (LFT) at KU Leuven, and Dr. Joshua Arimi who graduated with a PhD from 
       the University of Dublin (Ireland) but a former MSc graduate from LFT. Additionally, the 
       following KULeuven –UGent graduates were students at JKUAT: Juliana Kiio, Alice Ngima, 
       Susan Ndirangu (deceased). Other MSc graduates from the IUPFOOD program from Kenya 
       who trained at LFT are Silvenus Konyole (Nairobi University) and Daniel Njoroge MSc 2011 
       (Egerton University).  
          
                                               
        Figure 2. Prof Marc Hendrickx’s visit to Kenya (left) 2012 and (right) 2013 with his former/current 
                          students 
        
       In 2011, FST and LFT jointly won a collaborative funding under the VLIR-UOS Own Initiative 
       Program. The project is a North-South collaborative research led by Prof. Marc Hendrickx 
       from LFT, KULeuven and Dr. Daniel N. Sila from FST, JKUAT. The project targets building 
       students and staff capacity at JKUAT while addressing the Food and Nutrition Insecurity 
       Problem in Kenya. FST has been faced with problems in teaching, research and extension 
       due to insufficient  funds  for  research  and  inadequate  teaching  capacity  in  a  number  of 
       disciplines. The number of programmes and students is increasing while staff recruitment 
       and training remains constant. The main objective of this proposal was to strengthen FST 
       through  capacity  building  (academic  goal)  while  trying  to  mitigate  food  insecurity  and 
       malnutrition problems (development goal). It is in this perspective that the hard to cook 
       (HTC) problem in common beans was identified as entry point due to the high prevalence of 
       the problem in the humidity, high temperature climatic conditions of Kenya (Figure 3). It is 
       anticipated  that  scientific  measures  of  reducing  the  hard  to  cook  prevalence  will  be 
       developed while creating a variety of cheap and highly nutritious bean based cuisines and 
       formulae acceptable within the local communities. To highlight the major activities of the 
       project, capacity building, research out puts and dissemination pathways will be discussed. 
        
           Figure 3. Daniel Njoroge sampling various bean varieties found in Kenyan markets  
        
       Capacity building at FST 
       At  the  beginning  of  the  project  implementation,  2  PhD  students  were  engaged  in  2011 
       namely Mr. Daniel Njoroge (a MSc graduate of KULeuven) and Mr. Peter Kahenya (a JKUAT 
       graduate). The students follow a sandwich program that allows them to spend two third of 
       their time at the home university while travelling to Belgium to carry out the experiments 
       that they cannot do at home due to equipment limitations. In order to fully understand what 
       causes the hard to cook problem, Daniel Njoroge is trying to understand the mechanisms 
       responsible  for  the  hard  to  cook  defect  while  Peter  Kahenya  looks  at  integrated  food 
       solutions for reversing the hard to cook defect and its impact on the nutritional properties of 
       common beans and bean based recipes. By the end of 2014, 3 MSc students will have 
       benefited from the project. Through the VLIR- UOS funding, a number of state of the art 
       equipments have been bought at FST to strengthen the current infrastructural  capacity 
       (Figure 4). This includes an automated HPLC unit equipped with a diode array and refractive 
       index  detectors  for  fingerprinting  a  diverse  range  of  the  nutrient  and  antinutrient 
       compounds, a UV-Vis spectrophotometer and a texture analyzer.  
        
                                              
        Figure 4. Investment in equipment through VLIR-UOS funding indicating (left) a HPLC system, and 
                  (right) A desktop Computer and Color Printer 
                             
       Scientific Milestones of the project 
       A number of interesting results have been obtained midway in the project. First and most 
       importantly, local bean varieties have been classified into hard to cook and easy to cook. 
       Additionally, pectin related changes and the rate of moisture uptake have been identified as 
       important mechanisms with regard to the HTC problem. Preliminary results indicate that the 
       cooking time of beans can be reduced by 50% using low cost food processing technologies. 
       Inclusion of beans in common starchy staple diets has been demonstrated as one of the best 
       ways of averting the malnutrition problem while creating income by increasing the number 
       of acceptable food products in common super markets.  
        
       Outreach and dissemination of information 
       In order to increase the adoption rate of the project outputs, a participatory approach is 
       being employed where stakeholders within the different segments of the bean value chain 
       are engaged. This was the genesis for the formation of a stakeholder platform which meets 
       on a yearly basis to review project progress and to give corrective action. It is in this platform 
       where the adoption process is catalyzed through engagement of the private and public 
       sector players. The students have produced a number of bakery products using the pilot 
       plant  facilities  at  JKUAT  (Figure  5)  and  show  cased  them  in  national  and  international 
       exhibitions (Figure 6). 
        
        Figure 5: Some of the products developed and exhibited in the shows (scones, cakes and cookies). 
              They contain 50% cooked beans on wet basis (Red haricot variety). 
           
                                                
       Figure 6: Participation in National Exhibitions: (left) Nairobi International Trade Fair and (right) Nyeri 
                         Show in 2013