Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) goal to produce highly educated, creative and innovative graduates had inspired the Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, UPM to organize a program called Agriculture Moves Beyond Expectation (AMBER) that have known to become a platform for students to reinforce their soft skills.  AMBER consists of a series of competitions conducted every semester starting from last semester. This program also presents different themes for each semester by maintaining the program structure in form of competition. As for AMBER 2.1, it helps students to become more creative in innovating existing agricultural products into a dish or more artistically, a carving.

In this semester (Second Semester (2017/2018)), AMBER 2.1 was conducted with the theme “Integration between Traditional and Modern Agriculture”. A total of 130 participants which consist of four courses, Plant Physiology, Olericulture (Students of Faculty of Educational Studies), Post-Harvest Physiology and Food Crops have participated. This program is also accompanied by 8 mobility students that include Indonesia, China, and Thailand. Each course needs to participate in the contested competition such as Creative Physio Challenge, Fruit And Vegetable Carving, Salad Fusion and Seed Building. Each participant had been given at least 3 weeks to prepare themselves. For each of the categories, it will be judged by four judges that include their course lecturer and a cross-judge. In addition, AMBER 2.1 managed to receive an attention from a private company named Rimbun Sekebun which eventually become the sponsor of this program.

On the other hand, Creative Physio Challenge is one of the competitions that was conducted in AMBER 2.1. A total of five groups had participated in this competition. Each group required to produce a product based on their preference to create an interesting topic. The first group had selected Natural Farming as their topic where they use food residues as compost ingredients for agriculture use. Next is Rainbow Omelette which they will show how the white egg color react when it mixed with purple cabbage extract and another kind of ingredients. For the other three groups, their topics are Natural Dye, Xylem Ornamental and Seed Paper, and Miracle Fruit. All groups are tied to the condition that all the materials used in their topic should be based on agricultural products such as fruits, vegetables, and livestock.

Date of Input: 12/05/2018 | Updated: 12/05/2018 | fahezah_nor