Team:Korea-SIS/Human Practices
Human Practices
Introduction
As much as it is important to establish a feasible and effective biological solution to address global issues, raising social awareness is vital to make actual positive change. Therefore, not only did we develop a biological design to reduce post-harvest losses in agricultural practices, but we also made efforts to increase awareness of this issue at hand. As our survey responses displayed, approximately 70% of people did not know the concept and issue of postharvest. Thus, our team decided it was our responsibility, through human practices, to gain important and accurate knowledge from professionals and experts and share the valuable information to the general public.
Firstly, our team interviewed several professors and experts on diverse fields to obtain more information and knowledge regarding the post-harvest issues (specifically in Sri Lanka) and our experimental design’s biological aspects.
Our next step was to share the valuable information we acquired with other students and teachers. Holding multiple discussions with each other, we decided to divide the level of education into two parts--one for young students (kindergarteners) and one for middle/high schoolers. For middle/high schoolers, we held online seminars through free periods during online learning in school. To make these possible, we also designed and created posters, banners, and sticker boards that would facilitate our presentation to others and our project. We used these posters and boards for our campaigns in the streets and in relevant rice museums.
We visited Saesoon Kindergarten to teach kindergarteners about the rice and paddies of South Korea and inform them about the different seasons and the corresponding rice condition. We showed them pictures of the fields and also had them peel the husks of the rice for fun. Then, we told them about how fungi makes rice inedible and how we were making a device that could detect the fungi. With simple posters that we designed and created, they were able to easily understand the harms of fungi in rice and the different seasons that affect rice crops. In addition, due to the continuity of online learning, we hosted online seminars during free periods of school time. For about two weeks, we advertised the online seminar to promote our project. On September 14th, we held the first online seminar in which we screen shared, showed our promotion video, and presented a couple slides that portrayed a brief overview of our project’s issue and how we would address it.
Campaign
With the response from the survey we sent out, we found that not a lot of people were aware of the severity of the issue of post-harvest losses in agricultural practices. Therefore, campaigning was a crucial facet of our project, in which we were able to raise awareness and emphasize the degree of necessity of this global issue.
In order to raise further awareness about this vital issue to a larger, more diverse scope of audience, we set up campaigns outside of our school zone.
With our two educational posters and one big flyer to introduce our project, we firstly set up street campaigns. During these street campaigns, we answered any questions that people asked us about our project, the severity of the issue, etc. The sticker board really helped the audience recognize how large the financial impact was to these developing countries. Our sticker board asked, “How much do you think Sri Lanka loses due to poor post-harvest technology?” We made four different blank areas (answer spaces) that each had a range of different amounts of money. Most of the people visiting our street campaign put their stickers on the answer choice “1 billion~9 billion rupees,” which was the answer choice that indicated the lowest financial loss out of the four choices. Through the posters that displayed statistics converted to simple graphs, we were able to emphasize that these agricultural countries experienced a much larger financial loss of about 18 billion rupees annually, and most of them were in complete shock. As we explained the steps and actions we would take to address this issue, all of the audience showed great interest and gave us strong encouragement.
Another out-of-school campaign we held was in a rice museum. This Rice Museum, an agricultural museum operated by the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, had the purpose of promoting the value and nutritional excellence of rice to children and the general public. It was established to inform the public about the importance of agriculture and preserving agricultural culture as well. Therefore, after contacting the rice museum, they were extremely happy to offer us an area for us to campaign our project and raise awareness on what they also thought was a big problem in many agricultural countries that was crucial to educate people in.
This museum let us display our two important posters (one displaying statistics and graphs on post-harvest losses in agricultural countries, and one depicting the problem of agriculture and our biological solution to it) in many different areas of the museum. People in the museum stopped by and read these posters, asked us questions, and showed great interest and realization after we explained the problem and severity of post-harvest losses. Although not all of us were able to attend this rice museum campaign, these two posters clearly demonstrated our determined motives and ideas of our project.
ONLINE POSTER CAMPAIGN WITH PERU
In the near future, our iGEM team has established the plan to upload information on our topic in the form of infographics and posters on a varying number of prominent social media platforms used by many individuals around the world such as Instagram, Youtube and other platforms in collaboration with team Peru. The reason why we are doing this is to achieve the purpose of spreading information on our topic and the subject matter we are tackling while also working together with a different iGEM team in the process, helping each other with our respective projects. After our campaign with Peru, we managed to successfully create an infographic from the information that we shared with one another. Our collaboration with one another, despite being conducted throughout the virtual space, ultimately resulted in the formation of these three sheets of an infographic.
Education
The issue of agriculture and its consequences of post-harvest losses is a topic of extreme essence as the food we consume everyday depend on these agricultural crops such as wheat and vegetables. In the status quo, multiple pieces of advice have been given to attempt to address this issue, including proper cultural operations, harvesting, transportation, storage. However, they don’t really delve into the specifics of what each agricultural plantation can specifically do, and many of the tools are not accessible in developing countries due to high, expensive prices of recent tool development. What many governments fail to realize is the very fact that developing countries simply cannot accommodate those costly, high-quality tools to prevent post-harvest losses. By reading about the methods and proposals experts and governments were proposing for agricultural solutions to post-harvest losses, we realized the global lack of awareness concerning the current status quo of developing countries in agricultural fields. Therefore, it was very crucial to spread this awareness that could hopefully result in more universally feasible solutions that could actually decrease the amount of post-harvest losses. We realized that with further global educational awareness, more effective proposals, solutions, and projects can arise. Projects like ours are a substantial step to solve this burdensome issue of colossal importance. Our goal, thus, is to engineer a biosensor that will detect the levels of toxins in the rice to control the quality and quantity of rice production, considering the economic aspects of the project as well.
In other words, our team wished to encourage more students to learn about this issue; therefore, we took this process even further to educate our entire highschool and a part of middle school. Even though our initial plan was to conduct an offline seminar in the auditorium for high schoolers, a brief introduction to our project along with fun and engaging activities for middle schoolers, and a simple hands-on activity for kindergartners, we were heavily restricted with the gathering we had due to the COVID 19 situation, and thus, adjusted our plans.
Kindergarten
How can we earn rice? Rice is harvested through rice cultivation. The rice fields/paddies in Korea, the location in which rice is farmed, differ in appearance, depending on the seasons. In spring, young seedlings are transplanted into rice fields. During summer, farmers take good care of them in order to prevent these seeds from drying out under the hot summer sun. Summer is crucial for rice cultivation, but there is more to this. If it rains too much during this season or it rains too little, rice cannot grow properly. During autumn, these seeds express a gold-colored ripeness and are cut by the farmers. Finally in winter, the farmers prepare for farming next year.
We showed the rice to the students and explained that peeling the golden shell will produce rice. The children, awe-struck, experienced and observed the peeling of the rice. Furthermore, we explained while looking at the picture of mold: In the process of storing rice, there is a chance that the temperature of humidity rises, and mold is formed. In Sri Lanka, this is a common problem and results in rice being thrown away due to this. The fungus develops from the rice eye, and when it occurs in one place, it quickly spreads to the side and spreads the fungus throughout the rice. In Sri Lanka, poor post-harvest management of rice results in poor quality rice, reducing the amount that can be sold on the market by up to 30% compared to the amount harvested. To solve this problem, we are trying to minimize the loss of rice by creating a sensor that detects specific molds that often occur when rice is stored, and to inform local people about the importance of managing rice after harvesting. Ultimately, this will increase the quality of rice and minimize losses while increasing the income of Sri Lankan farmers and aiming for sustainable growth of peasants based on income.
At Saesun Kindergarten, we educated kindergarten students about our iGEM project/topic. Firstly, we showed the kindergarteners photos of the state of rice paddies during the four different seasons of Korea. After that, the appearance of rice paddies that follow the four seasons of Korea and the work that farmers do in each season for harvesting were explained. Then, the rice harvested in autumn was shown, and its appearance was observed by giving the students an opportunity to peel the skin. Finally, we explained the situation in Sri Lanka about how mold is formed due to temperature and humidity during the storage process of rice and also talked about the fact that a piece of protein reacted by mold bacteria was made and found using a light spectrophotometer.
High School
On September 14th, we presented the post harvest issue and our project to our school’s high school community through the Zoom platform. Through a set of descriptive slides, we screenshared and informed high school students on the importance of creating a feasible, cost-friendly solution to the immense post-harvest losses that developing nations face around the world. In one part of our slides, we displayed two posters: first, showing data and images with all the details regarding the imperative situation in Sri Lanka and second, showing a brief design of our sensor and how it will function. Students got the opportunity to learn about professional concepts such as the E.coli producing the CYP1A2 enzymes along with professional terms like enzymes and genes. Questions were answered regarding both the project and iGEM in general. Even though some high schoolers already knew about the concept of post harvest, many students displayed shallow knowledge or indifference into taking such actions. Thankfully, many students showed big interest in our topic/biological design and wanted to learn more about the concept of post harvest at the end.
Interviews
Professor. Sangwoo Seo, Seoul National University
Professor Sangwoo Seo is a professor of the school of chemical and biological engineering in Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Seo’s research is in the fields of synthetic biology and systems biology. Elucidating and redesigning complex regulatory networks of microorganisms that aim to produce useful chemicals, fuels, therapeutics and pharmaceuticals is the approach of his laboratory. Also, Dr. Seo and researchers in his lab are interested in environmental bio-remediation and biomedical applications.
We needed a process to mass-produce the desired protein using E.coli, and we asked professor Seo Sang-woo to help us. We wanted to use enzymes that produce certain substances in response to this to measure the amount of toxins produced in the event of rice decay, and professor Seo suggested the direction of the idea so that we could use the economic aspects and ways to satisfy users' needs when applied in practice. It was part of what process to go through and actually commercialize CYP1A2 in E.coli, and discussions were made on whether to use this enzyme separately or as a paper disk method using cell lysate itself.
We also find a way to verify that the enzyme is produced in E.coli and can have functional characteristics through this opportunity. By learning about the necessary pre-verification process in the preparation of the experiment, and actually doing it, we were able to increase the reliability of the subject and method of the project.
Professor Jinhan Kim, Kumoh National Institute of Technology
Professor Jinhan Kim is a professor of the business administration of Kumoh National Institute of Technology. We wanted to judge economic feasibility in the hope that our project would actually help many people. In order to make more people use this technology, we wanted to think about whether it could actually be sold in the market and how to fix it if there were parts to be supplemented and modified.
First, the professor gave feedback that in order for our project to actually benefit the people of rice farmers, a manual on the process of measuring toxins should be made. It also required an objective judgement on how the project we are preparing relates to technology that previously existed with the same purpose.
Through this project, we thought that the targets that we would eventually sell were services, not goods. So we asked the professor how the sales of goods and services differ from each other. The biggest difference is the transfer of ownership, which in the case of goods is completely transferred through the process of selling, but not in the case of services. These days, he explained that there are many 'service offering' types of products that offer and sell goods and services together, and our project seemed to be able to approach this concept. In this case, the strategies to be considered, the prices and the location of the facilities will vary depending on the target market and an appropriate sales strategy will need to be established.
The professor cited market analysis as the most important process. In other words, identifying the needs of people who are thought to be consumers, and figuring out the size and characteristics of the market are actually the most important steps to bring this technology to the world. In response to the professor's advice, we continued to exchange feedback with the local company in Sri Lanka and tried to get the most out of the situation there and the farmers' position.
We are also interested in business through NGOs, not profitability, as we aim to use our projects to help more people. Therefore, we asked about the difference between a profit-making business and a social contribution project through NGOs. The professor explained that the basic parts are the same, but there are differences in feasibility. He explained that the feasibility of the project will change because it only requires economic analysis enough to run the project, not analysis of profits. In other words, we were able to learn the idea of what we should analyze as a profitable product, or as a plan for social contribution, what options are available and better.
We thought that no matter how good ideas and products there were, we couldn't put them in the real market, and we couldn't change the world if people do not use them. Therefore, our team conducted an interview with the professor because we wanted to confirm whether our project could actually be implemented through economic analysis.
Aravinth Panch DreamSpace Academy
DreamSpace Academy is a non-profit organization that specializes in combating the socio-economic and environmental problems in Sri Lanka. The organization helped us reach out to the local community in Sri Lanka, specifically the farmers who could give feedback on the feasibility of our device as it is them who are going to be the potential users.
Rural Development Administration: Kim Ki Young
(National Institute of Agricultural Science)
We reached out to another expert on the fields of agriculture and biosensor. Mr. Kim Ki Young is an agricultural researcher in the Rural Development Administration, an expert in the field of agricultural food post-harvest management, also very familiar with the concept of implementing biosensors to tackle this post-harvest management issue.
He firstly asked us questions about the specific reasons we designed our biosensor in such ways, asking how our design would compare to the methods of using antibody-based lateral flow strips or the Elisa method. We replied by saying that the conventional Elisa method requires a measurement process of about 4 hours after taking the sample to the laboratory. However, in the case of sampling and measuring in a rice storage warehouse, multiple samples will be obtained per storage warehouse, and in order to perform inspection on samples from multiple farms, more samples will be subject to measurement. Therefore, the time for actual measurement is thought to be much more than just 4 hours. On the other hand, our method, the method of using spectrophotometry can be checked immediately. Thus, quick action could be taken, which would be important in measuring the degree of loss due to fungi whose distribution degree, distribution area, and propagation speed increase as time passes. In addition, since it can be performed at the rice storage site, instead of the laboratory, it would be easy to re-measure if there is an abnormality, and each farmer could receive the result quickly. Even further, since we are considering sales of services (or technology distribution through NGOs) rather than sales of products, and we aim to provide solutions to problems by taking specific measures based on the results after measurement in the field, we thought that performing in such a field with access to rapid measurement would be a great advantage.
After a back-and-forth inquiry session to precisely understand our biosensor design and purpose, agriculture researcher Kim Ki Young also supplied us with multiple cautions and considerations when designing and creating a mycotoxin biosensor. Firstly, he informed us that if the signal generated when Aflatoxin B1 and the enzyme bind is a kind of fluorescence, we should be informed and aware of the excitation light wavelength and fluorescence wavelength in advance. Second, when extracting mycotoxins from grains, since methanol and acetonitrile are used as extraction buffers, it is necessary to check whether the mycotoxin and the enzyme react and the signal is generated. Third, since there are many substances that cause fluorescence in grain, it is vital to check whether there is any interference effect from these substances. Last, he told us to check whether the binding selectivity with Aflatoxin B1 is sufficient compared to binding with other toxins.
Survey Analysis
The Reasons Behind this Survey…
The main reason for conducting the survey was to assess the awareness of the post harvest issue in Sri Lanka. We wanted to gain a sense on how much of an impact the introduction of a new technology would have on the storage facilities in Sri Lanka. We also strived to search for any existing organizations that have been targeting crop losses due to fungi in developing nations.
“In which process did you end up losing the most rice?”
This question was one of the many questions in the survey. It was a multiple-choice question with the choices, transport, storage, and selling. Out of the 44 participants, 42 participants of varying areas of farmland said that most crop losses occurred for them in the storage process while the other 2 farmers said that it occurred in the transport stages. We were able to analyze that local farmers of Sri Lanka were already aware of the fact that most of the crops were lost in the storage process after their harvest. From then on, we concluded that we were on the right track, looking for problems in the post-harvest storage process.
Sri Lanka Survey
In our online survey, one criterion that stood out was the fact that only 5 out of 44 participants answered that they were profiting from selling crops that they had farmed. This is an abysmal number considering that these people are supposed to make a living off of their crops. The lack of profit and the fact that they are losing most of their harvest due to storage issues further highlighted the importance of our iGEM project.
How much rice was being lost during storage and transport? Most farmers answered that they were losing 10~20% of their harvest during the transport/storage stage (6 out of 44 answered 20% the rest answered 10%). Even though this might seem like a small amount, it definitely does not seem so small when we consider that these farmers have anywhere between 1~25 hectares of land. This 10% could be the income that tips the farmers over the profit threshold every year and the fact that they are throwing the rice away due to poor management is something that needs to be addressed.
Sri Lanka Interview
Thanks to the people at DreamSpace Academy, our team was able to get a few interviews done on Sri Lankan farmers as well. When asked if they knew about the term “post-harvest losses”, all 5 of the interviewees seemed to know the term somewhat. However, when asked where and why the losses happened, answers varied and only some answers briefly mentioned that the bad storage mechanisms in Sri Lanka was a problem. As the interview went on, the misunderstandings of post-harvest losses became painfully clear. Everyone was satisfied with the storage unit they currently had and only one person even brought up the humidity being a danger to harvested crops. Overall, the farmers of Sri Lanka seemed to think that a storage unit was good enough if it had enough space and could protect against insects and rats. This result of the survey clearly shows us that crop losses due to fungi is not being addressed by the Sri Lankan farmers and that our project would definitely be of help to them.
Integrated Human Practices
Our team responded to the suggestions of different teams and organizations to strengthen our project idea.
1. KUAS
After our meeting with KUAS, several suggestions were made on the purpose of improving our project. The first suggestion given was a comment on the method of our project. While we initially thought that our project and the development of a biosensor was something that will act as both a prevention mechanism against fungal infection and a method of detecting it, we came to realize that it was leaning more towards detecting fungal infections. Furthermore, they suggested to us that we needed to firmly establish how our biosensor would benefit Sri Lankan farmers through detecting areas of fungal infection. Our response to these suggestions was researching feasible methods in preventing the discerned areas of fungal infection. In particular, a possible method included a humidity level control, a process in which we planned to separate the portion that had been detected as infected. We researched various other means of prevention by extensively delving in humidity control and fungicides. Finally, as an attempt to optimize use of our biosensor, we explored the joint effects of moisture content, temperature, and storage length of time on fungal infection through our nonparametric MARS model such that beyond discerning which portion is infected, the three variables could be appropriately adjusted to establish a hostile environment for fungal growth.
2. Survey Results
Our results of the survey on the population in South Korea revealed that although they were generally aware of the issue of post harvest losses in Sri Lanka, they were unaware of the extent to which this was a severe issue. As such, we broadened the priority of our project in not only offering a potent solution, but ensuring that the public was enlightened of the gravity of the issue, inciting further discussion and potential solutions. We made sure that our project idea was accessible to the general public through campaigns on the streets of highly populated cities as well as rice museums.
3. Dream Space Academy
Dream Space Academy is a non-profit community innovation center that specializes in combating the socio-economic and environmental problems in Sri Lanka. The organization helped us reach out to the local community in Sri Lanka, specifically the farmers who could give feedback on the feasibility of our device. Aravinth Panch, the co founder, and Shanjeevan, the guardian of electronics and mechanics lab, at Dream Space Academy specifically helped us connect with 50 farmers of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka with specialization in paddy cultivation, upland cultivation, and livestock management. We asked questions regarding the sufficiency rate and status quo of rice cultivation in the nation, specifically on the amount of consumption and total rice production that was sold successfully. Most importantly, we asked their opinions on the implementation of new, innovative technology to reduce post harvest losses. 90% of farmers responded “very good” or “good” to the proposed idea and commented that it would generate more profit, reduce costs and time spent on rice cultivation, and be aware of the modern technological soil resources. Not only did they help us connect with the local community in Sri Lanka through surveys, but they also helped us conduct interviews. We found out about the prevalence of the issue as multiple farmers noted that they were facing many post harvesting issues, with the main ones caused by insects, improper technology and storage methods, and natural conditions. All the farmers interviewed also stated that no one had helped them before with post harvest losses, so we think that our project will undoubtedly be a helpful contribution to the Sri Lanka community.
Through Dream Space Academy, we were able to gain insight into the agricultural conditions in Sri Lanka regarding post-harvest losses. This work was extremely significant especially because this was not dense information we gathered from the internet, but the most recent, first-hand information. We valued their advice and survey responses they sent to us, and made great effort to adjust our biosensor design to increase feasibility and effectiveness in Sri Lanka. With their survey responses, we were able to get a clearer, more realistic grasp of how almost all farmers were suffering from losses in post-harvest. The fact that there was almost no help given to solve the issue of post-harvest losses prompted us to realize that the majority surveyed were in support of the introduction of a new technological device. Most farmers primarily thought that their profit could increase in the long term. Realizing that a primary concern for farmers was their profit from post-harvest agriculture, we delved further into the economic aspects of this project and took the financial aspect of this project into consideration. We decided on the main value to prioritize in our project’s design by focusing on a single objective that determined what we hoped our design would encompass. This objective was to create a biosensor that effectively carries out its purpose that is also cheap and easily producible, in order for it to be easily accessible by a multitude of individuals who are in need of it. However, we were forced to make certain compromises during the designing process of our project. We faced the hardship when attempting to add a spectrophotometer within a biosensor, which was a difficult process that we couldn’t perform. Due to this, we were forced to compromise the quality of the spectrophotometer through the method of making it a rudimentary version instead. It could still detect the 340-360nm as it would have before the compromise was made, but it lacked the precision typically found in equipment in the lab.
4. Closing the Loop
In the end, our team managed to quote on quote close the loop between what was designed and what was desired through various methods. The first was our collaboration with Dream Space Academy, something that helped us educate Sri Lankan farmers on our project, what we hoped to achieve, and how we hoped to help them. The second was educating people in our community through the usage of delivering valuable information such as the severity of the issue we were dealing with in our project through the development of videos and campaigns. These videos and campaigns were made in order to perhaps stimulate these people to take an interest in the topic that our project was dealing with and possibly come up with solutions to it themselves, furthering the cause we hope to achieve. Finally, we contacted international organizations such as the World Health Organization and many others for the purpose of them and the world implementing the technology (biosensor) we have at the center of our whole project.
With the response from the survey we sent out, we found that not a lot of people were aware of the severity of the issue of post-harvest losses in agricultural practices. Therefore, campaigning was a crucial facet of our project, in which we were able to raise awareness and emphasize the degree of necessity of this global issue.
In order to raise further awareness about this vital issue to a larger, more diverse scope of audience, we set up campaigns outside of our school zone.
With our two educational posters and one big flyer to introduce our project, we firstly set up street campaigns. During these street campaigns, we answered any questions that people asked us about our project, the severity of the issue, etc. The sticker board really helped the audience recognize how large the financial impact was to these developing countries. Our sticker board asked, “How much do you think Sri Lanka loses due to poor post-harvest technology?” We made four different blank areas (answer spaces) that each had a range of different amounts of money. Most of the people visiting our street campaign put their stickers on the answer choice “1 billion~9 billion rupees,” which was the answer choice that indicated the lowest financial loss out of the four choices. Through the posters that displayed statistics converted to simple graphs, we were able to emphasize that these agricultural countries experienced a much larger financial loss of about 18 billion rupees annually, and most of them were in complete shock. As we explained the steps and actions we would take to address this issue, all of the audience showed great interest and gave us strong encouragement.
Another out-of-school campaign we held was in a rice museum. This Rice Museum, an agricultural museum operated by the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation, had the purpose of promoting the value and nutritional excellence of rice to children and the general public. It was established to inform the public about the importance of agriculture and preserving agricultural culture as well. Therefore, after contacting the rice museum, they were extremely happy to offer us an area for us to campaign our project and raise awareness on what they also thought was a big problem in many agricultural countries that was crucial to educate people in.
This museum let us display our two important posters (one displaying statistics and graphs on post-harvest losses in agricultural countries, and one depicting the problem of agriculture and our biological solution to it) in many different areas of the museum. People in the museum stopped by and read these posters, asked us questions, and showed great interest and realization after we explained the problem and severity of post-harvest losses. Although not all of us were able to attend this rice museum campaign, these two posters clearly demonstrated our determined motives and ideas of our project.
ONLINE POSTER CAMPAIGN WITH PERU
In the near future, our iGEM team has established the plan to upload information on our topic in the form of infographics and posters on a varying number of prominent social media platforms used by many individuals around the world such as Instagram, Youtube and other platforms in collaboration with team Peru. The reason why we are doing this is to achieve the purpose of spreading information on our topic and the subject matter we are tackling while also working together with a different iGEM team in the process, helping each other with our respective projects. After our campaign with Peru, we managed to successfully create an infographic from the information that we shared with one another. Our collaboration with one another, despite being conducted throughout the virtual space, ultimately resulted in the formation of these three sheets of an infographic.
The issue of agriculture and its consequences of post-harvest losses is a topic of extreme essence as the food we consume everyday depend on these agricultural crops such as wheat and vegetables. In the status quo, multiple pieces of advice have been given to attempt to address this issue, including proper cultural operations, harvesting, transportation, storage. However, they don’t really delve into the specifics of what each agricultural plantation can specifically do, and many of the tools are not accessible in developing countries due to high, expensive prices of recent tool development. What many governments fail to realize is the very fact that developing countries simply cannot accommodate those costly, high-quality tools to prevent post-harvest losses. By reading about the methods and proposals experts and governments were proposing for agricultural solutions to post-harvest losses, we realized the global lack of awareness concerning the current status quo of developing countries in agricultural fields. Therefore, it was very crucial to spread this awareness that could hopefully result in more universally feasible solutions that could actually decrease the amount of post-harvest losses. We realized that with further global educational awareness, more effective proposals, solutions, and projects can arise. Projects like ours are a substantial step to solve this burdensome issue of colossal importance. Our goal, thus, is to engineer a biosensor that will detect the levels of toxins in the rice to control the quality and quantity of rice production, considering the economic aspects of the project as well.
In other words, our team wished to encourage more students to learn about this issue; therefore, we took this process even further to educate our entire highschool and a part of middle school. Even though our initial plan was to conduct an offline seminar in the auditorium for high schoolers, a brief introduction to our project along with fun and engaging activities for middle schoolers, and a simple hands-on activity for kindergartners, we were heavily restricted with the gathering we had due to the COVID 19 situation, and thus, adjusted our plans.
Kindergarten
How can we earn rice? Rice is harvested through rice cultivation. The rice fields/paddies in Korea, the location in which rice is farmed, differ in appearance, depending on the seasons. In spring, young seedlings are transplanted into rice fields. During summer, farmers take good care of them in order to prevent these seeds from drying out under the hot summer sun. Summer is crucial for rice cultivation, but there is more to this. If it rains too much during this season or it rains too little, rice cannot grow properly. During autumn, these seeds express a gold-colored ripeness and are cut by the farmers. Finally in winter, the farmers prepare for farming next year.
We showed the rice to the students and explained that peeling the golden shell will produce rice. The children, awe-struck, experienced and observed the peeling of the rice. Furthermore, we explained while looking at the picture of mold: In the process of storing rice, there is a chance that the temperature of humidity rises, and mold is formed. In Sri Lanka, this is a common problem and results in rice being thrown away due to this. The fungus develops from the rice eye, and when it occurs in one place, it quickly spreads to the side and spreads the fungus throughout the rice. In Sri Lanka, poor post-harvest management of rice results in poor quality rice, reducing the amount that can be sold on the market by up to 30% compared to the amount harvested. To solve this problem, we are trying to minimize the loss of rice by creating a sensor that detects specific molds that often occur when rice is stored, and to inform local people about the importance of managing rice after harvesting. Ultimately, this will increase the quality of rice and minimize losses while increasing the income of Sri Lankan farmers and aiming for sustainable growth of peasants based on income.
At Saesun Kindergarten, we educated kindergarten students about our iGEM project/topic. Firstly, we showed the kindergarteners photos of the state of rice paddies during the four different seasons of Korea. After that, the appearance of rice paddies that follow the four seasons of Korea and the work that farmers do in each season for harvesting were explained. Then, the rice harvested in autumn was shown, and its appearance was observed by giving the students an opportunity to peel the skin. Finally, we explained the situation in Sri Lanka about how mold is formed due to temperature and humidity during the storage process of rice and also talked about the fact that a piece of protein reacted by mold bacteria was made and found using a light spectrophotometer.
High School
On September 14th, we presented the post harvest issue and our project to our school’s high school community through the Zoom platform. Through a set of descriptive slides, we screenshared and informed high school students on the importance of creating a feasible, cost-friendly solution to the immense post-harvest losses that developing nations face around the world. In one part of our slides, we displayed two posters: first, showing data and images with all the details regarding the imperative situation in Sri Lanka and second, showing a brief design of our sensor and how it will function. Students got the opportunity to learn about professional concepts such as the E.coli producing the CYP1A2 enzymes along with professional terms like enzymes and genes. Questions were answered regarding both the project and iGEM in general. Even though some high schoolers already knew about the concept of post harvest, many students displayed shallow knowledge or indifference into taking such actions. Thankfully, many students showed big interest in our topic/biological design and wanted to learn more about the concept of post harvest at the end.
Professor. Sangwoo Seo, Seoul National University
Professor Sangwoo Seo is a professor of the school of chemical and biological engineering in Seoul National University in Seoul, South Korea. Dr. Seo’s research is in the fields of synthetic biology and systems biology. Elucidating and redesigning complex regulatory networks of microorganisms that aim to produce useful chemicals, fuels, therapeutics and pharmaceuticals is the approach of his laboratory. Also, Dr. Seo and researchers in his lab are interested in environmental bio-remediation and biomedical applications.
We needed a process to mass-produce the desired protein using E.coli, and we asked professor Seo Sang-woo to help us. We wanted to use enzymes that produce certain substances in response to this to measure the amount of toxins produced in the event of rice decay, and professor Seo suggested the direction of the idea so that we could use the economic aspects and ways to satisfy users' needs when applied in practice. It was part of what process to go through and actually commercialize CYP1A2 in E.coli, and discussions were made on whether to use this enzyme separately or as a paper disk method using cell lysate itself.
We also find a way to verify that the enzyme is produced in E.coli and can have functional characteristics through this opportunity. By learning about the necessary pre-verification process in the preparation of the experiment, and actually doing it, we were able to increase the reliability of the subject and method of the project.
Professor Jinhan Kim, Kumoh National Institute of Technology
Professor Jinhan Kim is a professor of the business administration of Kumoh National Institute of Technology. We wanted to judge economic feasibility in the hope that our project would actually help many people. In order to make more people use this technology, we wanted to think about whether it could actually be sold in the market and how to fix it if there were parts to be supplemented and modified.
First, the professor gave feedback that in order for our project to actually benefit the people of rice farmers, a manual on the process of measuring toxins should be made. It also required an objective judgement on how the project we are preparing relates to technology that previously existed with the same purpose.
Through this project, we thought that the targets that we would eventually sell were services, not goods. So we asked the professor how the sales of goods and services differ from each other. The biggest difference is the transfer of ownership, which in the case of goods is completely transferred through the process of selling, but not in the case of services. These days, he explained that there are many 'service offering' types of products that offer and sell goods and services together, and our project seemed to be able to approach this concept. In this case, the strategies to be considered, the prices and the location of the facilities will vary depending on the target market and an appropriate sales strategy will need to be established.
The professor cited market analysis as the most important process. In other words, identifying the needs of people who are thought to be consumers, and figuring out the size and characteristics of the market are actually the most important steps to bring this technology to the world. In response to the professor's advice, we continued to exchange feedback with the local company in Sri Lanka and tried to get the most out of the situation there and the farmers' position.
We are also interested in business through NGOs, not profitability, as we aim to use our projects to help more people. Therefore, we asked about the difference between a profit-making business and a social contribution project through NGOs. The professor explained that the basic parts are the same, but there are differences in feasibility. He explained that the feasibility of the project will change because it only requires economic analysis enough to run the project, not analysis of profits. In other words, we were able to learn the idea of what we should analyze as a profitable product, or as a plan for social contribution, what options are available and better.
We thought that no matter how good ideas and products there were, we couldn't put them in the real market, and we couldn't change the world if people do not use them. Therefore, our team conducted an interview with the professor because we wanted to confirm whether our project could actually be implemented through economic analysis.
Aravinth Panch DreamSpace Academy
DreamSpace Academy is a non-profit organization that specializes in combating the socio-economic and environmental problems in Sri Lanka. The organization helped us reach out to the local community in Sri Lanka, specifically the farmers who could give feedback on the feasibility of our device as it is them who are going to be the potential users.
Rural Development Administration: Kim Ki Young
(National Institute of Agricultural Science)
We reached out to another expert on the fields of agriculture and biosensor. Mr. Kim Ki Young is an agricultural researcher in the Rural Development Administration, an expert in the field of agricultural food post-harvest management, also very familiar with the concept of implementing biosensors to tackle this post-harvest management issue.
He firstly asked us questions about the specific reasons we designed our biosensor in such ways, asking how our design would compare to the methods of using antibody-based lateral flow strips or the Elisa method. We replied by saying that the conventional Elisa method requires a measurement process of about 4 hours after taking the sample to the laboratory. However, in the case of sampling and measuring in a rice storage warehouse, multiple samples will be obtained per storage warehouse, and in order to perform inspection on samples from multiple farms, more samples will be subject to measurement. Therefore, the time for actual measurement is thought to be much more than just 4 hours. On the other hand, our method, the method of using spectrophotometry can be checked immediately. Thus, quick action could be taken, which would be important in measuring the degree of loss due to fungi whose distribution degree, distribution area, and propagation speed increase as time passes. In addition, since it can be performed at the rice storage site, instead of the laboratory, it would be easy to re-measure if there is an abnormality, and each farmer could receive the result quickly. Even further, since we are considering sales of services (or technology distribution through NGOs) rather than sales of products, and we aim to provide solutions to problems by taking specific measures based on the results after measurement in the field, we thought that performing in such a field with access to rapid measurement would be a great advantage.
After a back-and-forth inquiry session to precisely understand our biosensor design and purpose, agriculture researcher Kim Ki Young also supplied us with multiple cautions and considerations when designing and creating a mycotoxin biosensor. Firstly, he informed us that if the signal generated when Aflatoxin B1 and the enzyme bind is a kind of fluorescence, we should be informed and aware of the excitation light wavelength and fluorescence wavelength in advance. Second, when extracting mycotoxins from grains, since methanol and acetonitrile are used as extraction buffers, it is necessary to check whether the mycotoxin and the enzyme react and the signal is generated. Third, since there are many substances that cause fluorescence in grain, it is vital to check whether there is any interference effect from these substances. Last, he told us to check whether the binding selectivity with Aflatoxin B1 is sufficient compared to binding with other toxins.
The Reasons Behind this Survey…
The main reason for conducting the survey was to assess the awareness of the post harvest issue in Sri Lanka. We wanted to gain a sense on how much of an impact the introduction of a new technology would have on the storage facilities in Sri Lanka. We also strived to search for any existing organizations that have been targeting crop losses due to fungi in developing nations.
“In which process did you end up losing the most rice?”
This question was one of the many questions in the survey. It was a multiple-choice question with the choices, transport, storage, and selling. Out of the 44 participants, 42 participants of varying areas of farmland said that most crop losses occurred for them in the storage process while the other 2 farmers said that it occurred in the transport stages. We were able to analyze that local farmers of Sri Lanka were already aware of the fact that most of the crops were lost in the storage process after their harvest. From then on, we concluded that we were on the right track, looking for problems in the post-harvest storage process.
Sri Lanka Survey
In our online survey, one criterion that stood out was the fact that only 5 out of 44 participants answered that they were profiting from selling crops that they had farmed. This is an abysmal number considering that these people are supposed to make a living off of their crops. The lack of profit and the fact that they are losing most of their harvest due to storage issues further highlighted the importance of our iGEM project.
How much rice was being lost during storage and transport? Most farmers answered that they were losing 10~20% of their harvest during the transport/storage stage (6 out of 44 answered 20% the rest answered 10%). Even though this might seem like a small amount, it definitely does not seem so small when we consider that these farmers have anywhere between 1~25 hectares of land. This 10% could be the income that tips the farmers over the profit threshold every year and the fact that they are throwing the rice away due to poor management is something that needs to be addressed.
Sri Lanka Interview
Thanks to the people at DreamSpace Academy, our team was able to get a few interviews done on Sri Lankan farmers as well. When asked if they knew about the term “post-harvest losses”, all 5 of the interviewees seemed to know the term somewhat. However, when asked where and why the losses happened, answers varied and only some answers briefly mentioned that the bad storage mechanisms in Sri Lanka was a problem. As the interview went on, the misunderstandings of post-harvest losses became painfully clear. Everyone was satisfied with the storage unit they currently had and only one person even brought up the humidity being a danger to harvested crops. Overall, the farmers of Sri Lanka seemed to think that a storage unit was good enough if it had enough space and could protect against insects and rats. This result of the survey clearly shows us that crop losses due to fungi is not being addressed by the Sri Lankan farmers and that our project would definitely be of help to them.
Our team responded to the suggestions of different teams and organizations to strengthen our project idea.
1. KUAS
After our meeting with KUAS, several suggestions were made on the purpose of improving our project. The first suggestion given was a comment on the method of our project. While we initially thought that our project and the development of a biosensor was something that will act as both a prevention mechanism against fungal infection and a method of detecting it, we came to realize that it was leaning more towards detecting fungal infections. Furthermore, they suggested to us that we needed to firmly establish how our biosensor would benefit Sri Lankan farmers through detecting areas of fungal infection. Our response to these suggestions was researching feasible methods in preventing the discerned areas of fungal infection. In particular, a possible method included a humidity level control, a process in which we planned to separate the portion that had been detected as infected. We researched various other means of prevention by extensively delving in humidity control and fungicides. Finally, as an attempt to optimize use of our biosensor, we explored the joint effects of moisture content, temperature, and storage length of time on fungal infection through our nonparametric MARS model such that beyond discerning which portion is infected, the three variables could be appropriately adjusted to establish a hostile environment for fungal growth.
2. Survey Results
Our results of the survey on the population in South Korea revealed that although they were generally aware of the issue of post harvest losses in Sri Lanka, they were unaware of the extent to which this was a severe issue. As such, we broadened the priority of our project in not only offering a potent solution, but ensuring that the public was enlightened of the gravity of the issue, inciting further discussion and potential solutions. We made sure that our project idea was accessible to the general public through campaigns on the streets of highly populated cities as well as rice museums.
3. Dream Space Academy
Dream Space Academy is a non-profit community innovation center that specializes in combating the socio-economic and environmental problems in Sri Lanka. The organization helped us reach out to the local community in Sri Lanka, specifically the farmers who could give feedback on the feasibility of our device. Aravinth Panch, the co founder, and Shanjeevan, the guardian of electronics and mechanics lab, at Dream Space Academy specifically helped us connect with 50 farmers of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka with specialization in paddy cultivation, upland cultivation, and livestock management. We asked questions regarding the sufficiency rate and status quo of rice cultivation in the nation, specifically on the amount of consumption and total rice production that was sold successfully. Most importantly, we asked their opinions on the implementation of new, innovative technology to reduce post harvest losses. 90% of farmers responded “very good” or “good” to the proposed idea and commented that it would generate more profit, reduce costs and time spent on rice cultivation, and be aware of the modern technological soil resources. Not only did they help us connect with the local community in Sri Lanka through surveys, but they also helped us conduct interviews. We found out about the prevalence of the issue as multiple farmers noted that they were facing many post harvesting issues, with the main ones caused by insects, improper technology and storage methods, and natural conditions. All the farmers interviewed also stated that no one had helped them before with post harvest losses, so we think that our project will undoubtedly be a helpful contribution to the Sri Lanka community.
Through Dream Space Academy, we were able to gain insight into the agricultural conditions in Sri Lanka regarding post-harvest losses. This work was extremely significant especially because this was not dense information we gathered from the internet, but the most recent, first-hand information. We valued their advice and survey responses they sent to us, and made great effort to adjust our biosensor design to increase feasibility and effectiveness in Sri Lanka. With their survey responses, we were able to get a clearer, more realistic grasp of how almost all farmers were suffering from losses in post-harvest. The fact that there was almost no help given to solve the issue of post-harvest losses prompted us to realize that the majority surveyed were in support of the introduction of a new technological device. Most farmers primarily thought that their profit could increase in the long term. Realizing that a primary concern for farmers was their profit from post-harvest agriculture, we delved further into the economic aspects of this project and took the financial aspect of this project into consideration. We decided on the main value to prioritize in our project’s design by focusing on a single objective that determined what we hoped our design would encompass. This objective was to create a biosensor that effectively carries out its purpose that is also cheap and easily producible, in order for it to be easily accessible by a multitude of individuals who are in need of it. However, we were forced to make certain compromises during the designing process of our project. We faced the hardship when attempting to add a spectrophotometer within a biosensor, which was a difficult process that we couldn’t perform. Due to this, we were forced to compromise the quality of the spectrophotometer through the method of making it a rudimentary version instead. It could still detect the 340-360nm as it would have before the compromise was made, but it lacked the precision typically found in equipment in the lab.
4. Closing the Loop
In the end, our team managed to quote on quote close the loop between what was designed and what was desired through various methods. The first was our collaboration with Dream Space Academy, something that helped us educate Sri Lankan farmers on our project, what we hoped to achieve, and how we hoped to help them. The second was educating people in our community through the usage of delivering valuable information such as the severity of the issue we were dealing with in our project through the development of videos and campaigns. These videos and campaigns were made in order to perhaps stimulate these people to take an interest in the topic that our project was dealing with and possibly come up with solutions to it themselves, furthering the cause we hope to achieve. Finally, we contacted international organizations such as the World Health Organization and many others for the purpose of them and the world implementing the technology (biosensor) we have at the center of our whole project.