USDA & Bowie State Research Partnership Yields Benefits for Students

Two-year, $20,000 USDA Grant to Help Uncover Health Benefits in African Plants

MEDIA CONTACT: Damita Chambers, dchambers@bowiestate.edu, 301-832-2628 mobile

(BOWIE, Md.) – A five-year research partnership between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Bowie State University is yielding benefits for top undergraduate students working with some of the world’s best scientists and helping to uncover potential medicinal benefits of native African plants. A two-year $20,000 USDA grant expanding the partnership enables biology students to get hands-on research experience as part of a semester-long class.

In the next two years, the research will focus on analyzing the components of African plants traditionally used as food and medicine to identify what makes them good for people. Students in a plant metabolomics research course, led by the BSU partnership coordinator, Dr. Anne Osano, will now regularly conduct part of their study in USDA labs. With the help of scientists in her native country of Kenya along with BSU students who traveled there on research trips, Dr. Osano collected these plants in the country and began her investigation there, before bringing them back to the BSU campus for further research. Now, the USDA partnership allows for deeper analysis using the agency’s lab equipment and expertise.

“You are what you eat. Increasing the health of the population for me is a big deal,” said Dr. Osano, a botanist and associate professor in the Department of Natural Sciences. “We want to try to understand the healthy components in these foods – what is in the traditional foods people ate that made them healthy?”

Dr. Osano says that the traditional Kenyan population was very healthy, but now, with more modern food options, people have changed their diets tremendously and are becoming sicker. As part of this research, she aims to generate enough evidence to convince people that these traditional foods are indeed better for your health.

One of the plants being studied is cowpeas, often considered a poor man’s food, but is rich in vitamins and low in saturated fat and sodium. Another one, the spider plant, is typically seen as an ornamental plant, which is known for its indoor air-purifying capacity and medicinal properties.

Throughout the USDA partnership, one to two excellent Bowie State students have worked with USDA scientists for about 10 hours per week each semester and even summers on the agency’s research initiatives and sometimes, on the students’ own research projects. More than a dozen BSU students have participated so far – many are from minority groups that are underrepresented in science fields. Some students have completed successful research presentations. Others have graduated and gone on to enroll in prestigious doctorate programs as a result of their experiences. For Dr. Osano, the partnership harvests more than additional data on the health benefits of African plants.

“The research partnership gives our students access to USDA’s state-of-the-art research facilities and to their scientists. The kind of work that we do requires fairly advanced technologies – I rely on the USDA labs for some of the analysis that I do,” she said. “My goal is that our students are exposed to research and encouraged to think of research opportunities as alternative careers.”

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About Bowie State University
Bowie State University (BSU) is an important higher education access portal for qualified persons from diverse academic and socioeconomic backgrounds, seeking a high-quality and affordable public comprehensive university. The university places special emphasis on the science, technology, cybersecurity, teacher education, business, and nursing disciplines within the context of a liberal arts education. For more information about BSU, visit bowiestate.edu.