OUR FELLOWS
As a young girl, Mary Mamle Apetorgbor used to follow her parents to the farm, balancing a load of produce or wood on her head. Passing through the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana on her walk, she decided that one day she would become a scientist. Years later, after graduating with her BSc degree in Botany, Apetorgbor supported herself by teaching biology in a secondary school. She dreamed of eventually obtaining a post-graduate degree, and then her luck turned. “Soon after I began the course work for my master’s degree, I was promoted directly into the PhD program as the best graduate science student,” she proudly remembers.
Apart from their high protein content, mushrooms also have twice the vitamin C content of oranges,” she explains. “They are as nutritious as fish.” Apetorgbor wants to promote to farmers the cultivation of a long stem, popular species of edible mushroom that grows near termite hills. “People stop their cars to buy them along the roadside, especially in southern Ghana.
Field of Research
Biodiversity conservation of forest trees and mushrooms to improve livelihoods of local communities.