Louise Leroux wins IRD photo competition: The many facets of millet

There are 15 types of millet: sorghum, pearl millet, proso millet, bird millet, finger millet, small grain millet, native millet, brown millet, finger millet, Guinea millet, white and black fonio, rosary grass, raishan and teff. The IRD competition was designed to showcase all these crops in 3 categories:

1. Field: millet cultivation and farmers' work
2. Processing: sales, processed products, millet-based dishes
3. Research: research staff in the field or lab, instrumentation or innovative methodology, modelling, microscopy, etc.

Louise Leroux's photo is entitled "Science and Belief" and is captioned as follows: "Measuring the Leaf Area Index (LAI) at LAI2200 in the early morning in a field of finger millet in the village of Sob in Senegal, a country where the Muslim religion is dominant. To avoid the impact of direct sunlight, the measurements had to be taken before the first rays of the sun, coinciding with the first morning prayer. Doctoral student Ibrahima Diack therefore took his LAI2200C and his prayer beads with him when he took his LAI measurements.

This photo was taken in the frame of ELISA project, funded by CIRAD as part of the CRESI incentive scheme, with the aim of comparing the performance of different indirect LAI measurement methods for heterogeneous canopies.