Dr. Satoshi Nakamura, researcher of the Crop, Livestock and Environment Division, received the “Best Paper Award” from the Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture for his paper entitled Soil Fertility Management for Sustainable Lowland Rice Production in Ghana -Farmer’s Perspectives and Soil Physicochemical Properties- (DOI: 10.11248/jsta.60.119) published in the journal Tropical Agriculture and Development.

The award is given to an excellent paper that contributes greatly to the development of tropical agriculture and information dissemination. In this paper, Dr. Nakamura described a comparative study conducted in Ghana on soil fertility and farmers’ perspectives of soil fertility management in the two major rice growing agro-ecological zones, the Guinea Savanna (GS) and the Equatorial Forest (EF), to examine farmers’ perspectives on soil fertility, how farmers manage fertility, and to suggest proper soil fertility management for lowland rice farming.

The award ceremony was held at the 121st Annual Meeting of Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture held on March 11, 2017.