Nutritional sciences expert Dorothy Blair will present “Using indigenous foodways to encourage the consumption and continued use of soybeans as a rotational crop for maize in Uganda,” on Wednesday, December 4, from noon to 1 p.m., in Foster Auditorium, 102 Paterno Library. Blair is a former assistant professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at Penn State who was recently assigned to the CNFA Farmer to Farmer volunteer program. This initiative enables the transfer of knowledge from U.S. experts to farmers and small agribusinesses around the globe.

Roasting pre-cooked soybeans. Image provided by presenter

Soybeans were introduced to Ugandan Farmers as an edible rotational crop a few years prior to Blair’s assignment with the Farmer to Farmer program. However, at that time, farmers had used soy as an oil seed rather than a bean and consequently, the roasted beans were neither palatable nor modified to remove anti-nutritional factors. This seminar examines Blair’s field cooking workshop approach to engaging farmers in the process of preparing and developing recipes for soybeans based on their own traditional legume culinary practices.

Blair retired last December from the Penn State Nutritional Sciences program after 32 years of teaching, research and outreach in the areas of food security, food systems, and international cuisine.

This presentation is free and open to the public and can also be viewed online. The presentation is part of an ongoing series highlighting the importance of indigenous knowledge and is sponsored by ICIK, the Interinstitutional Consortium on Indigenous Knowledge, and the Penn State Social Sciences Library. For more information on ICIK, including links to past presentations on the speaker series, go to icik.psu.edu.

If you anticipate needing accommodations or have questions about the physical access provided, please contact Helen Sheehy 814-863-1347/ hms2@psu.edu in advance of your participation.