Kayla's Borlaug-Ruan Internship at ILRI: Examining aphids and spider mites??? Whaaaaattttt?

I feel so behind! I meant to do a blog yesterday but I was just so worn out from work earlier that I went to bed before 9:30! Work is great. I'm enjoying it so much! Monday and Tuesday was just getting introduced to what we're going to be doing the rest of the summer. We did mainly research about regeneration, forage seeds, and then some research yesterday about why some of the forages they have in the greenhouse won't flower or seed, or why they will flower but not seed. (Serious problems:)...) It was really cool. One of my supervisors took us outside of ILRI to show us some of Addis and some grocery stores and restaurants we can go to if we want. The city is soooo much different from areas like Chicago. It might be because a ton of construction is going on right now, but the buildings are all pretty short.. unlike all of America's skyscrapers! There are tons of people along the streets though. They're packed! Also, there are a lot of beggars. (Which is kind of scary and I felt bad because there are a lot of children beggars too...) On our walk, Tigist asked if Millie and I like bananas, and bought us each our own bunch! They look and taste so good! :)

Some of the buildings built in the mountains

The bananas Tigist bought Millie and I

Something that's interesting is at 10 every morning, the people I work with all go to the Zebu Club for a coffee break. Then we eat lunch around 12:15, and after lunch we all go to the Zebu for another coffee! It's so weird! But it's good:) They're all so friendly and funny:) Andreas is another intern who got here today. He's a native of Ethiopia, but lived in the US for most of his life, and moved back to Ethiopia 6 years ago. He's only going to be here for about a month, then he has to leave for an orientation at UC Davis in California. He's really cool and funny.

Today at work was so much fun! We started our day looking at the field and watching the women preparing the field for planting. It's a huge time-consuming job and is very laborious. After that, Dr. Hanson took us to the greenhouses to observe more plants and add more to the list that haven't ever flowered or seeded. While doing that, Dr. Hanson noticed there were aphids on many of the plants. These are tiny, little bugs that grow and eventually kill the plant. This is a huge problem since it's occurring in the greenhouse, where we're trying to grow forages that we don't have many seeds of... After discovering a few plants severely infected with aphids, Dr. Hanson, Andreas, Millie, and I examined all of the forage plants in the greenhouses. There were so many! After talking to the head of the greenhouses about all of the aphids and how to eradicate them, we stopped by the screen-house to look at one more species of plant. Here, we discovered there were spider mites! This is another insect that eventually kills plants! Andreas, Millie, and I took samples of both the aphids and spider mites to observe under a microscope, take pictures of them, do some research about them, and write up a short report about them both. It was all extremely fascinating! If you want to learn anything about spider mites, click on this link! http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05507.html and if you want to learn anything about aphids, check out this link! http://ucipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7404.html

Mature aphids

Immature aphids

Near the veins are larvae spider mites
The large one is a male spider mite
The little circles are spider mite eggs

Today after work Millie and I decided to take on Addis ourselves, without Tigist! That was intimidating walking along the streets of Addis just the two of us, especially since we're the minority now. We're the ones that look different and can't speak much Amharic... We've learned some of the basic words, but we both keep butchering the pronunciation of them... At least we make everyone laugh...:) But anyway, we wanted to walk around Addis because we needed to do some shopping. For food of course! :) It was so much fun! Thinking about food... on Monday I tried injera for the first time. Weirdest thing ever! It's a sourdough-risen flatbread with a unique, slightly spongy texture and traditionally made out of teff flour. In Eritrea and Ethiopia, a variety of stews, sometimes salads (during Ethiopian Orthodox fasting, for which believers abstain from most animal products) or simply more injera (called injera firfir), are placed upon the injera for serving. Using one's right hand, small pieces of injera are torn and used to grasp the stews and salads for eating. The injera under these stews soaks up the juices and flavours of the foods and, after the stews and salads are gone, this bread is also consumed. Injera is thus simultaneously food, eating utensil, and plate. When the entire "tablecloth" of injera is gone, the meal is over. (Wikipedia) Very different style of both food and eating! But it's good! I love it! :) Something else I tried for the first time was the coffee here. Ethiopia is known for coffee. The coffee plant originates from here, so coffee is a huge deal here:) I decided that I should adjust to the culture, and I'm glad I did. I really like it! It's totally different than coffee in America!

So about the plants I posted about before. I took some pictures of them to post them here.