Abstract:
Industrial training is a course module that is conducted from either within or outside the University with an intension of hands on skills to the students. For my ease, I conducted my IT from BCU (u) Ltd located on plot 46 Pallisa road Industrial area in Mbale district for a period of weeks from 20th May to 26th July 2019. The key objective of this training is to enable us we students apply the theory learnt at the University and put it into practice, get more knowledge in the field so as to know how to work with the community and the challenges they are facing outside.
When I was in the field for my training 1 carried out a lot of activities specifically on coffee production and these included nursery bed preparation, nursery bed management practices such as shading, watering, gap filling and spraying, pot filling, potting, transplanting, hole making, planting, weeding fertilizer application, mulching, training, pruning, pest and disease identification, harvesting, coffee processing, quality analysis, buying of coffee, value addition for example roasting, grinding, weighing packaging, seating and marketing of coffee and its products. During the period of IT, gained a lot of skills in both pre-harvest and post-harvest handling of coffee. Despite of the activities and skills gained in the field, faced same challenges such as the off season since serious harvesting of coffee had not started and hence limiting me from some activities. Inadequate materials to be used in the field, processing and value addition section. and also a challenge of unfavorable weather conditions such as heavy rainfall and too much sunshine that made me miss out some important information. However, these challenges can be solved by the Union preserving some coffee by storing it in silos for study purposes by IT students, purchasing or materials to be used by internees in the field and having another form of power such as a generator other than relying only on electricity which is never stable.
In my conclusion I did my training successfully due to the co-operation and the maximum efforts maintained between internees, field supervisors and the rest of the staff of BCU.
