From Agroforestry to Analog Rice, From Indonesia to Thailand: IPB Students Won IPITEX 2018

Food insecurity is real and people are making efforts to achieve food sufficiency by various approaches. Analogue rice is one of IPB innovation which is a rice-like product composed from various ingredients as one approach to achieve food sufficiency. A group of students from Faculty of Forestry, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), namely Nur Badri, Muhammad Ridwan Baihaqi, Muhammad Hawari Azka and Nada Radilla presented their innovation on a brand new food product, called COWI. COWI is the name for the analogue rice which is composed by the mixture of sweet potato, sago and banana weevil harvested from agroforestry land. Because of the uniqueness and the impactful innovation, these students were successfully bringing back a bronze medal from the Work Innovation Competition which was held at the International Intellectual Property, Invention, Innovation and Technology Exposition (IPITEX) in Bangkok, Thailand on 2 – 6 February 2018.

"We are very excited and enthusiastic about being able to represent IPB as well as representing Indonesia by bringing an innovation that are in line with our field, which is agroforestry. We were confident enough to present our innovation to the judges" as explained by Badri. Not only that the group won the bronze medal, they also received the special award from the Association of Polish Inventors and Rationalizers for their innovation.

The competition which was held by the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) in collaboration with the International Federation of Inventor's Associations (IFIA) was participated by various countries such as Canada, China, Egypt, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Lebanon, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Vietnam and Thailand (TK).