Inside the Mazingira Centre Lab: HABITAT Project Students Experience

This blog post is a follow-up to our first student blog on field experiences where the students shared their field experiences in Bomet County. Here we share the students’ experiences of their three-month placement at the ILRI’s Mazingira Centre. The Mazingira Centre’s vision is to define and create environmentally friendly, climate-smart, and food- and nutrition-secure livelihoods for smallholder farmers and livestock keepers in the Global South. Winnie collected forage samples to evaluate nutritional quality and emission potential, Caroline examined the links between soil health and plant biodiversity while Daniel mapped indigenous farmer knowledge. A key highlight of this laboratory experience was the students’ participation in the 9th International Greenhouse Gas & Animal Agriculture Conference, which provided students with much needed learning insights for their data analysis and a valuable opportunity to network with peers and experts. Overall, the experience reinforced the importance of precision, teamwork, and clear communication linking fieldwork, laboratory analysis, and data interpretation