Research Area: Food Safety, Water & Sanitation
Participatory Mycotoxin Management in India and the Genetic Determinants of Symptom Manifestation in the Sorghum Grain Mold Disease Complex
Cornell University, 2020 Abstract: Mycotoxin contamination is an important constraint to food security and public health in a range of food systems. Dietary exposure to mycotoxins is associated with health and nutrition adversities in humans and livestock. Surveillance systems and management strategies are rarely attentive...
Whitman Barrett
Whitman Barrett is a PhD student in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University. His work focuses on the reuse of human excreta in agriculture, with the goal of improving smallholder…
Addressing Mycotoxin Exposure across Village Food Systems in Rural India
TCI-TARINA Policy Brief No. 10, October 2017
Food Safety in India: Status and Challenges
TCI-TARINA Policy Brief No. 5, May 2017
Farmer Research Networks Enable Community-Based Mycotoxin Management in Rural Indian Villages
Abstract CONTEXT Mycotoxins and other food safety and preservation challenges are prevalent in smallholder food systems, and communities often lack the knowledge and capacity required to effectively diagnose and address these concerns. Participatory research can facilitate innovation in resource-poor settings by fostering collective identity and...
Essays on the Time Use and Behavioral Patterns of Women’s Access to Household Water in Rural India
Cornell University, 2020 Abstract: In this dissertation, three independent research papers are joined together by the common research theme of ‘Women’s access to household water’ in India. The first two papers are based on the self-collected data from selected villages of Jharkhand, India. In these papers,...
Mycotoxin Surveillance for Low-Resource Settings
Abstract Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites produced by fungi in a wide range of foods (cereals, peanut, tree nuts, dried fruits, coffee, cocoa, grapes, spices…) both in the field and after harvest, particularly during storage. They can also be found in processed foods of plant origin,...
Pandemics and food systems – towards a proactive food safety approach to disease prevention & management
Abstract Recent large-scale pandemics such as the covid19, H1N1, Swine flu, Ebola and the Nipah virus, which impacted human health and livelihoods, have come about due to inadequate food systems safeguards to detect, trace and eliminate threats arising from zoonotic diseases. Such diseases are transmitted...
Exploring Aflatoxin Contamination and Household-Level Exposure Risk in Diverse Indian Food Systems
Abstract The present study sought to identify household risk factors associated with aflatoxin contamination within and across diverse Indian food systems and to evaluate their utility in risk modeling. Samples (n = 595) of cereals, pulses, and oil seeds were collected from 160 households across...
Spatiotemporal Assessment of Post-Harvest Mycotoxin Contamination in Rural North Indian Food Systems
Abstract The spatiotemporal trends in aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), fumonisin B1 (FB1), and deoxynivalenol (DON) accumulation were analyzed in a range of food commodities (maize, groundnut, pearl millet, rice, and wheat) in village settings in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, India. Samples (n = 1549) were collected across six communities and six time points spanning...