Research Groups: Chemical Ecology and Plant Biochemistry
Natural Resources Institute, Faculty of Engineering & Science
The overarching aim of this research is to identify the key pollinators of beans and the margin flowers on which they forage. This action will evaluate the impact of different agrisystems, field margins and non-crop habitat on ecosystem services, especially pollination services, for smallholder bean-maize farming systems at multiple scales and determine additionally the role of trees as components of bean system landscapes and as pollinator forage and refuge. The work also entails the development of predictive tools to evaluate landscape traits for promoting pollination ecosystem services. The afore-mentioned objectives are being addressed through landscape and farm-scale assessments of floral resources and refuge for beneficial insects, observation and monitoring of pollen deposition by specific pollinators and interactions between these pollinators and non-crop flowers, DNA sequencing, chemical analysis and high resolution spatial analysis.
This work will result in the further enhancement of existing methods of maximising on and scaling up ecosystem services, especially pollination services, for increased agricultural yields. This will, in turn, bring to smallholder farming communities food and nutrition security, surplus and additional income from its sale, access to other necessities of life and ultimately incentivise them to conserve the biodiversity that facilitates these outcomes.
Cedric joined the University of Greenwich’s Natural Resources Institute (UoG NRI) in February of 2021 to carry out full-time doctoral research funded through a Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (FaNSI) Scholarship. He is also the Founder and Lead of Weed2Pesticide, a University of Oxford-endorsed social enterprise that is working towards the processing of an invasive weed into a bio-pesticide. Cedric holds a BAgrSc Hons in Animal Science and Rangeland Management from Lupane State University in Zimbabwe and an MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. He has also taken various short courses in tropical ecology, food systems, sustainability and leadership.
Prior to joining UoG NRI, Cedric had accrued over 8 years of agro-ecological research and environmental education experience gained from working in academia, and in the government, non-governmental and private sectors, spanning across 10 countries on 3 continents of the globe. The work that Cedric has done in all of his prior engagements has gone towards the realisation of his career goal, which is to facilitate the maximisation and scaling up of the benefits that African communities obtain from their natural environment, in such a way that would incentivise them to protect nature, in return.
Memberships
