About the creators

About the Author

manish

Manish N. Raizada received his B.Sc. from the University of Western Ontario (Genetics) and Ph.D. from Stanford University (Plant Molecular Genetics). He held fellowship positions at The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico City and at the California Institute of Technology. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, Canada. Dr. Raizada is Founder of SAKGlobal (SAKs, Sustainable Agriculture Kits), an effort to bring inexpensive technologies to the world’s 1 billion subsistence farmers. SAK kits are based on the principles of sustainable, ecological agriculture.  More information about Dr. Raizada can be found at his research website at: www.RaizadaLab.weebly.com 

​Manish can be contacted by email at raizada@uoguelph.ca 

About the Illustrator

illustrator image

Jay L. Smith graduated from the Graphic Design Diploma program at Conestoga College in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada in 2014, with her main focus in illustration. In early 2015, Lisa was selected as part of a national competition onto the SAKGlobal team as the illustrator for the picture book along with other illustrated materials. She has created illustrations related to microbiology, genetics, botany, agriculture and international development for scientific journals and presentations during her time with the University of Guelph. 

Lisa is available on a contract basis to create picture lessons for your organization and can be contacted by email at smithjaylisa@gmail.com

Lisa’s portfolio can be accessed online at lisajaysmith.myportfolio.com

Editorial assistance

We thank Rachana Devkota (University of Guelph), Roshan Pudasaini (LI-BIRD, Nepal) and especially women farmers associated with LI-BIRD for conducting and enabling extensive participatory editing of this picture book.  We thank Kamal Khadka (University of Guelph) for translating English captions into Nepali captions.  We thank Anuja Shrestha (University of Guelph) for editorial assistance and for creating the SAKBooks website. We thank Dr. Tejendra Chapagain (University of Guelph) for assistance with the lessons and for Nepali translation editing. We thank Myla Manser (University of Guelph) for technical assistance during editing and Paige Kennedy (University of Guelph) for assisting with text captions.