Role in the project

The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, School of Science is involved by doing the following tasks:

• coordination and implementation of the project activities in the target case study areas in Kenya.
• design and adoption of the research activities in FLOWERED to the Kenyan context.
• contribution to geological, geophysical, geochemical, hydrogeological characterization and assessment of test areas in Kenya as well as the hydrogeological features along the East Rift Valley System in order to identify fluoride pollution sources and design a plan to an effective monitoring network (Task 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4) WP1
• gathering existing knowledge on agricultural land uses, livestock systems and soil properties of the case study areas of Kenya (Task 2.1)
• identifying and testing agricultural practices to mitigate fluoride contamination on
• productivity of selected food and forage crops (Task 2.2)
• assessing different amendments to enhance fluoride neutralization in soils (Task 2.3),
• investigating accumulation of fluoride in animal products in both managed and wild animals and on the effect of several factors (e.g., diet, rumen function, animal breed and genetics, etc.) on fluoride accumulation and detoxification (Task 2.4)
• mobilizing relevant actors in the rural communities of the case study areas aiming to promote and assess promising agricultural mitigation strategies (Task 2.5) WP2
• identification, characterization and test of local materials (including geological, organic and waste materials) from the study areas as potential fluoride removers (Task 3.1 as co-leaders) and to experiment synthetic materials LDHs (Layered Double Hydroxides) (Task 3.2)
• to transfer the most effective defluoridation techniques from the lab-scale to the small village-scale by designing and constructing one or more defluoridator prototypes, taking into account specific water uses, and local environmental and socio-economic contexts of the study areas (Task 3.4) WP3
• implementation of the Web-GeoDB system (Task 4.1) and mobile application (Task 4.2), support for Remote Sensing classification algorithms related and crowd-generating data activities to 4.3 and 4.4 task studies WP4
• participation in capacity building and a widespread and successful dissemination of technical and scientific knowledge being acquired within the Project at different levels, from local to international researchers and end-users (Task 6.3);
• development of dissemination strategy and tools, deployment of dissemination campaign in order to improve local and scientific knowledge (Task 6.1, 6.3)
• scientific dissemination also through co-authoring scientific papers in international peer-review journals (Task 6.2) WP6