Dr Aurélie Bechoff

Biography

Dr Aurélie Bechoff has been employed at the University of Greenwich since October 2009 and is currently working as a food technologist at the Natural Resources Institute. She has been involved in writing a number of international peer-reviewed papers, winning projects and has undertaken cutting-edge research. Her PhD (2005–10) brought an original contribution to research to understand the extent of provitamin A destruction during drying and also during storage of dried sweet potato. The results of the PhD have made an important and measurable contribution to the HarvestPlus Challenge Programme Project (a four-year Gates-funded project in which NRI was a partner organisation). Her PhD was supervised by Professor Andrew Westby and Professor Keith Tomlins from NRI. The PhD research has resulted in six peer-reviewed publications in international journals. An award from the Natural Resources International Foundation helped Dr Bechoff to carry out additional research in Uganda in order to round up the results of her PhD. Dr Bechoff also won the ECR University Excellence award in 2013. In addition, she has helped improve practical facilities and capacity building in NRI, spending time planning and re-organising laboratories from the Food & Market Department with Dr Corinne Rumney in order to improve the capacity of these laboratories to produce better quality research. Dr Bechoff has long-term experience in Burkina Faso, Ecuador and Uganda and short-term experience elsewhere in Africa (i.e. Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, DRC Congo, Senegal). French is her mother tongue and she speaks fluent Spanish.

Research Interest

Experience in root and tuber crop processing, post-harvest technology and food quality.