MLR Forestal and URACCAN sign collaboration agreement

MLR Forestal and the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN) have strengthened ties in favor of education and research. Both entities signed a one-year collaboration agreement that will benefit not only the signing parties, but also society. “We have great expectations because this agreement allows us to make a direct contribution to the academy and to many young people who are in training,” said Luis López, manager of Sustainable Development at MLR Forestal.

López stressed that one of the focuses of the agreement is hands on training.We want to professionalize personnel who have already been technified and who are working empirically . And we want to open the doors to students who need to do their internships with a directed approach,” he explained.

The URACCAN careers most benefited from the agreement

Leonor Ruiz, vice-rector of URACCAN stated that the undergraduates students most benefited from this agreement “are almost all because they all have an environmental component. However, the careers in Agroforestry Engineering and Social Sciences with a mention in Local Development are benefiting a little more so because they are going to work with the cocoa sector.”

In this regard, MLR Forestal will have specialized personnel to contribute to research, internships, monographic theses, practical classes and exchanges with URACCAN.

Both institutions also pledged to design and organize training and updating programs that are of mutual interest and favor academic, scientific and cultural development.

They will promote an important research project on cocoa and its varieties

Cocoa is a key issue for both MLR and URACCAN. “URACCAN told us that it has an important research project on cocoa, its varieties and productivity. For us it is vital because we have been looking at the issue of pollination, how to make plants more productive, and which varieties are the most compatible with the climatic conditions. So this has been a very timely agreement,” López pointed out.

In the words of the Sustainable Development manager, “MLR has always been open to academia and research. We call ourselves pioneers in the Nicaraguan forestry sector and in cocoa management. And now we can say that this agreement is atypical, different from what we have done previously, because it allows us to have a vision of greater contribution to society, of the educational community that is formed in URACCAN. In addition, we will be able to open all the experience that we have accumulated in years and make it available to the academy. “