The 13th JIRCAS Science Café featuring a talk entitled “Going to Africa to fight against locusts” was held at the Blue Baobab Africa, a cafe bar and meeting place located in Azabudai, Minato-ku in Tokyo on March 4, 2018.

The Science Café is a regular event which aims to disseminate information on the recent activities and the status of researchers' efforts. JIRCAS is promoting a research program on “Development of stable production technology for agricultural products in tropical and other poor environments”. In this Science Café, Dr. Kotaro Maeno, a researcher in the Crop, Livestock and Environment Division, explained the ecology of living organisms in the Sahara Desert in Africa, using locust as an example, and introduced the activities of people fighting the desert locusts that eats and destroys crops.