The Board for International Food and Agricultural Development (BIFAD) is honored to recognize Ms. Seerjana Maharjan as the recipient of the 2021 Student Researcher Award for Scientific Excellence in a Feed the Future Innovation Lab.
With this award, BIFAD recognizes research efforts that contribute to the interrelated and interdependent objectives of the U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy: inclusive and sustainable agriculture-led economic growth, strengthened resilience among people and systems, and a well-nourished population. Ms. Maharjan is a Ph.D. student at Tribhuvan University in Nepal and an Assistant Scientific Officer at the Department of Plant Resources under the Ministry of Forests and Environment, Government of Nepal. Her research is funded in collaboration with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management.
The BIFAD awards panel highlighted the exemplary scientific rigor and relevance of Ms. Maharjan’s research, which focuses on the ecology and management of the highly invasive weed Parthenium hysterophorus through biological methods. Her research addresses major gaps in the understanding of this destructive weed’s distribution patterns and projected spread, which is known to leave agricultural land unsuitable for crop production or animal grazing. Ms. Maharjan’s research modeled the likely spread of this weed under different climate change scenarios. Her results, which point to wider spread of the weed in coming years, urge the scientific community and decision makers to take prompt action around quarantine decision-making to prevent invasion of this weed in new areas and to develop early detection and eradication strategies. Ms. Maharjan is also exploring two biological control options, rust fungus and leaf feeding beetles, which show promise for the effective and successful management of the weed.
