 With the goal of addressing the critical concerns of food security and waste reduction of locally grown produce, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Taiwan Technical Mission, through the enhancement of the efficiency of the production distribution supply chain, of the Fruit and Vegetable Sector Project, more commonly known as the Seven Crops Project, hosted a training session on dehydration of local produce for students of the Babano Secondary School. The training session focused on various aspects of agro-processing, including the production of candied fruits and vegetables. Students were provided with hands-on training and practical demonstrations to equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge to produce high quality processed foods. According to the Project Coordinator of the Seven Crops Project, Adli Nurovec, the training session holds significant importance in the project's efforts to improve the supply chain for local fruits and vegetables. She says that given the escalating demand for food and the necessity to minimize waste, St. Lucia's agriculture industry must adopt inventive and sustainable approaches to ensure food security. Right now we are in the second phase of the Seven Crops Project and in the first phase we realised that there are some areas of shortcomings where we had to expand and extend assistance to the farmers to actualise the full potential from the crops that they have on the farms. An area that we see that was absolutely necessary was agro-processing, or is agro-processing. So today we have the second round in agro-processing training for these, today is the schools, last week it was the women's cluster, Babano women's cluster, and the next training will be for the Miku women's cluster. We are targeting these clusters because they already have the equipment and certain know-how in agro-processing. So what we are doing here is to build the capacity in putting value added to the crops that are already available and crops that go to waste. The facilitator of the training session attached to the Taiwan Technical Mission, Gary Wu, expressed his contentment with the student's level of interest and receptiveness during the training. He further emphasised that the knowledge and skills gained by the students could serve as an inspiration for them to pursue careers in the agro-processing industry. So for today's lessons I teach them about the dehydration techniques, it's a very common technique that we always use in food processing because it helps the product to extend its shelf life, it gives it the better preservation by removing the water from the fruit. I think the students can learn something, can learn some very useful ideas and techniques from these lessons and actually dehydration can be done in a very simple way like the sound dry or the oven dry. So even though they don't have the very professional machines that the industrial use dehydrator, they can still perform the dehydration techniques in-house. The collaboration between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Taiwan Technical Mission showcases the government's unwavering dedication to promote insustainable agricultural practices and attaining food security objectives in St. Lucia, empowering the upcoming generation of farmers and entrepeneurs with the essential skills and knowledge to produce high quality processed fruits and vegetables, establishes the groundwork for a more sustainable agriculture sector in St. Lucia. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine reporting.