Abstract:
Industrial training is a course module that is conducted from either within or outside the University with the intension of imparting practical hands on skills to the students. For my case I conducted my IT from BCU Ltd located on plot 46 Pallisa road industrial area, Mbale district ten 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 I carried out a lot activity specifically on coffee production and they were 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 sealing and marketing of coffee and its products. During period of IT, I gained a lot of skills in both pre and post-harvest handling of coffee. Despite of the activities and skills gained in the field, I faced some challenges such as 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 favorable weather conditions such as heavy rain fall and too much sunshine that made me miss out some important information. However, these challenges can be over carne by the Union preserving some coffee by storing it in silos study purposes by IT students, purchasing of more 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. Conclusively the training was successfully done due to the co-operation and the maximum efforts maintained between Internees field supervisors and the staff of BCU.
