Deus Mugabe doesn’t have to imagine what food insecurity must be like. He’s lived with it.
The 2021 recipient of a Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Scholarship was born in Uganda to Rwandan refugees. Mugabe’s parents fled an ethnic conflict and settled as refugees in Uganda in the 1960s. He was born in 1989 and his family returned to Rwanda in 1994 just months after the genocide against the Tutsi.
“In the early years after the genocide, there was significant food insecurity there. Even in our own household, we often didn’t have enough food, or else the food didn’t have enough nutrition for a growing child,” says Mugabe, a PhD student in the University of Guelph’s collaborative Plant Agriculture and International Development program.
“My grandmother is a smallholder farmer, and spending summers with her allowed me to really see agriculture up close for the first time, and that’s when I started thinking about getting into agriculture for a living.”
Mugabe obtained his bachelor’s degree in agriculture from the Adventist University of the Philippines with a major in crop science. He then moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree at Washington State University. He began working on his PhD at the University of Guelph in September 2019.
He is specifically interested in conducting research to identify and develop molecular markers for white mould disease resistance in soybean.
He’s also looking at the suitability of selected modern plant breeding and genetic tools in the African smallholder model of agriculture.
“He’s determined to use his knowledge by helping farmers around the world match the increasing demand for food while being environmentally responsible,” says Istvan Rajcan, plant science professor and soybean breeder at the University of Guelph.
Mugabe says he has made the most of going to school during a challenging time.
“There’s a lot of student organizations from the department, college and university level. Fortunately, I had started getting involved right before the pandemic, and it was actually a really good opportunity to get even more involved and help bring back those connections that were being lost due to lockdowns and social distancing and the like,” he adds.
2021 Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Scholarship Sponsors:
