Key Speakers
Dr Peter Carberry joined ICRISAT as Deputy Director General – Research in January 2015 and is also the Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes & Dryland Cereals from January 2018. Prior to joining ICRISAT, he was a Chief Research Scientist in CSIRO, Australia and led the CSIRO team within the Agricultural Production Systems Research Unit (APSRU). Dr Carberry’s research expertise is in crop physiology and the development and application of farming systems simulation models. He is a key developer and driver of the Agricultural Production Systems SIMulator (APSIM) modelling framework.
Dr Pramod K. Joshi is the director for South Asia, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Previously, he held the position of the director of the National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM), Hyderabad, India. His areas of research include technology policy, market, and institutional economics. Dr Joshi has received the Professor R.C. Agrawal Lifetime Award of Indian Society of Agricultural Economics and Dr MS Randhawa Memorial Award of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He is the fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Indian Society of Agriculture Economics. Dr Joshi has also served as the chairman of the SAARC Agricultural Centre’s governing board in Dhaka, Bangladesh and UN-CAPSA governing board in Bogor. He served as the member of the intergovernmental panel on the World Bank’s International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development; International Steering Committee for the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Challenge Program of CGIAR.
Mr. Frédéric Muel is a French engineer in agriculture, member of the technical staff of UNIP (1982-2014) and today at Terres Inovia, expert in knowledge transfer in grain legumes between science and all the actors involved in the supply chains. He was the executive secretary of AEP (1993-2005), the European Association in Grain Legumes research, promoting multidisciplinary research cooperation combined with a multi-actor approach to link the scientific community with stakeholders. He has recently participated in a foresight on oil and protein world demand by 2030, with a special attention to EU, for the strategic plan of Terres Inovia. He participated in several EU applied research projects, and he is today the coordinator of LegValue, an EU project started in June 2017 for 4 years, which aims to facilitate the development of new legumes value chains through Europe (www.legvalue.eu).
Dr Teodardo Calles is an Agricultural Officer (legumes) at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) who advocates for the inclusion of legumes in agricultural production as a means to improve the sustainability of production systems and nutrition of smallholder farmers. As an agronomist, he has worked on research projects that improve low-input agricultural systems, including grasslands, through the inclusion of leguminous species and is well experienced on legume plant genetic resources and taxonomy. He also worked as a consultant, advising companies about quality criteria and the procurement of plant-based raw material for the production of natural body care products. Mr Calles holds a bachelor’s degree in agronomy from the Central University of Venezuela, Maracay, Venezuela and a master’s degree in agricultural sciences, food security and natural resources management from the University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany, where also earned a doctoral degree in agricultural sciences.
Dr Jonas Nwankwo CHIANU is presently a Chief Agricultural Economist at the African Development Bank (AfDB), Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. He coordinates pan-African Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) implemented across over 30 African countries. He also coordinates a multi-donor Trust Fund, Agriculture Fast Track Fund (AFT) that supports Agricultural SMEs in 10 African countries by providing grant resources for studies for generating technical contents for formulating bankable project proposals for profitably expanding their operations. Prior to joining AfDB, Dr. Chianu worked in two of the centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The first was the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from where he left for Kyoto University as a postdoc of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The second CGIAR center was the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). Dr. Chianu has over 100 publications, including 16 book chapters and 53 refereed journal articles, most in journals with high impact factors.
Dr Rajeev Varshney, presently Global Research Program Director, Genetic Gains and Founding Director, Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology, has been serving ICRISAT in various capacities since 2005. In his dual appointment, he served CGIAR Generation Challenge Program (hosted by CIMMYT, Mexico) as Theme Leader for six years. Before joining ICRISAT, he worked at IPK-Gatersleben, Germany for five years. His research is focused on developing genomic tools, understanding genome architecture, dissecting genetic basis of trait variation, and using this natural variation to improve crops in marginal environments in Asia and Africa. He has genome sequences of 8 crops including pigeonpea, chickpea, peanut and pearl millet and several molecular breeding products in chickpea, peanut and pigeonpea to his credit. Varshney is an elected fellow/ member/ academician of Leopoldina- German National Academy of Sciences, The World Academy of Sciences, American Association of Advancement in Sciences (USA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), Indian National Science Academy and several other Indian science academies. Varshney has received the Bhatnagar Prize, the most coveted science and technology award from Government of India, Agricultural Greater Good Initiative Award and Research Excellence India Citation Award of Thomson Reuters. Varshney is a prolific author and has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters for the last four consecutive years.
Dr. Petr Smýkal is presently Associate Professor in the Department of Botany, Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic. Having studied a combination of agronomy, plant biotechnology and genetics, he has been working for over 25 years on various topics of both theoretical and applied plant biology ranging from pollen embryogenesis, flowering to transgenosis. However, for the last 15 years, he has been working on legumes, particularly on pea, an iconic plant of genetics. Starting from germplasm diversity assessment to phylogeny and legumes domestication focusing on the study of legumes (wild pea and Medicago model) seed dormancy from various angles (genomics, transcriptomic, metabolomic and anatomical) including its adaptive values in natural conditions. Having studied legumes CWR diversity, he has applied this knowledge for the development of pea introgression lines to broaden pea crop diversity. He has 56 WoS listed publications with over 900 citations.
Dr. Clarice Coyne is the Curator and Geneticist of the Cool Season Food Legume Germplasm Collection held by the USDA at the Western Regional Plant Germplasm Introduction and Testing Station on the campus of Washington State University, Pullman. Dr. Coyne earned her B.S. degree in Plant Science from the University of California, Davis and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Horticulture, with an emphasis on Plant Breeding and Genetics, from Oregon State University, Corvallis. Over the last 22 years, Dr. Coyne authored or co-authored 83 publications and 8 book chapters. Dr. Coyne’s research focuses on enhancing the utilization of food legume genetic resources for crop improvement.
Prof. Noel Ellis has more than 30 years of experience in plant molecular genetics. Before coming to New Zealand, he was Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes based in Hyderabad, Professor of Crop Genetics at IBERS Aberystwyth and Associate Head of Crop Genetics at the John Innes Centre in Norwich. He moved to the John Innes directly after completing his PhD at the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit at the University of Edinburgh. Research interests of Prof. Noel Ellis have focused on the genetic basis of the inter- and intra-specific evolution and diversification of legumes at both genomic and phenotypic levels. A core activity has been to develop approaches for the isolation of genes identified by their phenotype. Dr. Ellis established and coordinated an EU FP6 integrated project ‘Grain Legumes’ (2004-2008 involving 80 labs in 25 countries) which ranged from life cycle analysis of economic and environmental impact to genome sequencing as research networks are needed in science, for economies and to combine disparate disciplines. His pioneering work in genetics particularly in pea has been well recognized.
William Erskine is Director of the Centre for Plant Genetics and Breeding (PGB) at The University of Western Australia (UWA). He currently leads major projects in Timor Leste and Bangladesh on agricultural intensification funded by the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR). He is also involved in annual pasture legume improvement in Australia with PGG Wrightsons. At UWA, he undertakes research supervision and teaching of postgraduates. He was at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria as Assistant Director General (Research) from 2001-2007, Leader of the Germplasm Improvement Program (1998-2001), and Lentil Breeder from 1980 for 18 years. Scottish born, William completed a BA (University of Cambridge) in 1973, a MAg in 1976 in Papua New Guinea, and a PhD from Cambridge in 1979.
Dr Jean-Marcel Ribaut is the Director of the Integrated Breeding Platform (https://www.integratedbreeding.net), an initiative aiming at improving the efficiency of plant breeding programmes by enabling breeders to access modern technologies, analytical pipeline, and breeding materials and related information in a centralised, integrated and practical manner. Prior to becoming IBP Director in 2015, Jean-Marcel was the Director of the Generation Challenge Program (GCP), a 10-year initiative of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) with a total budget of US$ 170 million, leading a large and international network of partners on translational research in plant science. Jean-Marcel has a particular interest in increasing yields and quality of cultivated crops in developing countries through the development of improved cultivars adapted to local environments and market demands. He believes in true partnership, from both public and private sectors, and solid capacity building to overcome some of the bottlenecks in R4D, with developing-country partners as key actors in the research arena and along the crop value chain.
Dr Bodo Raatz works at the CIAT bean program (Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical) in Colombia as the leader of the Andean bean improvement program. Graduated from University of Bielefeld, Germany in 2005, studying biochemistry. Obtained phd in plant genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne in 2009. Since 2011 active as a breeder and geneticist in the bean program at CIAT, working on bush and climbing beans mainly directed at African smallholder farmers. Breeding traits of interest include abiotic resistance (drought, heat, poor soil fertility), resistance to biotic stresses (viral, bacterial, fungal diseases and pests) and biofortification (increased Fe and Zn) to alleviate malnutrition. Molecular markers are developed and applied in molecular breeding to increase breeding efficiency. In cooperation with the Pan African Bean Research Alliance (PABRA) germplasm is delivered and researchers trained to create impact by improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers.
Suhas P. Wani, Research Program Director – Asia and Director, ICRISAT Development Center (IDC) at ICRISAT, India. His area of specialization is scaling-up science-based interventions to benefit millions of farmers in Asia and Africa particularly in the area of sustainable agriculture for improving rural livelihoods. His expertise spans through integrated watershed management and water use efficiency (Green, blue and grey) in field to catchment scale, wasteland development, wastewater management, biodiesel plantation, integrated nutrient management and carbon sequestration for the conservation of natural resources and their sustainable use for improving livelihoods of farmers. He has received Gold medal from Government of Vietnam for the improvement of agriculture and rural development in Vietnam; Fellowship from Yunnan Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YAAS), Kunming, China; Doreen Mashler Award; Krishi Sanman Award; Asian CSR Leadership Award for the year 2015; 50 Most Impactful Leaders in Water & Water Management; and World Water Leadership Congress, 3rd CSR Impact award. In his credit, 575 research papers published in national and international journals, books and conference proceedings.
Dr Harsh Nayyar is a Professor of Stress Biology at Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. He teaches Plant Anatomy and Plant Physiology to graduate and post-graduate students at his University. His primary research interests include screening the core germplasm of various food legumes such as Lentil, Chickpea, Mungbean and Urdbean for heat, cold and drought tolerance, involving several traits related to growth, physiology, anatomy, reproductive biology and yield. He is investigating the mechanisms associated with imparting tolerance against various abiotic stresses, connecting reproductive biology, physiology and molecular biology. He is working on pulses in collaboration with ICARDA, ICRISAT, World Vegetable Center and Indian Agricultural Universities in northern part of the India. He has identified promising heat tolerant lines of chickpea, lentil and mungbean. He has published about 100 research papers on stress biology in peer-reviewed research journals. His research on food legumes has been funded by many national and international agencies.
Dr Rosalind Bueckertreceived a BSc degree from the University of Reading (UK), and MSc, PhD and post doc research from the University of Arkansas, USA- specializing in drought physiology and crop nutrition in cotton and soybean. She is a Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, specializing in field level crop physiology, abiotic stress, legume crops, and yield formation. Current research activities include high throughput plant phenotyping in lentil, canola, and wheat. For the last ten years she has focused on assessing heat resistant traits in pea.
Prof. Diego Rubiales is a Professor at the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, CSIC, Córdoba, Spain. He has been working on resistance to diseases in legumes during the past 20 years, having worked before on diseases of cereals. During this period, he served as President first of the European Grain Legume Association and then of the International Legume Society. He has co-authored 300 major publications, reaching H=40. He has directed 27 successful PhDs. In addition to these research activities, he runs pea and faba bean breeding programs, resulting in 3 faba bean and 4 pea cultivars registered. Prof. Rubiales paid particular effort to participation and coordination of research both at EU and Mediterranean level. He was coordinator of a European projects EUFABA, MEDILEG and COST849, and WP leader in GLIP, LEGRESIST, ABSTRESS, LEGATO and DIVERSify. He also led 17 Spanish research projects and 13 projects for bilateral projects with North African countries and participated in one Australian and two Canadian projects.
Dr Marie-Laure Pilet-Nayel is a Research Scientist at INRA IGEPP, Rennes, France, after graduated with a PhD degree in genetics and plant breeding in 1999. She has developed expertise in quantitative genetics, genomics, marker-assisted-selection and disease resistance in plants. After her post-doc position at USDA-ARS, WA, USA (1999-2000), she has managed research programs in genetics and genomics of Aphanomyces root rot resistance in legumes for the past 18 years, in tight collaborations with pathologists, physiologists and breeders. Her recent accomplishments are the development of NILs and GWA studies to validate QTL involved in partial resistance to Aphanomyces root rot in pea and to study the QTL-underlying mechanisms.
Professor Kadambot Siddique is the Hackett Professor of Agriculture, Chair and Director of the University of Western Australia’s Institute of Agriculture. He has more than 30 years’ experience in agricultural research, teaching and management in both Australia and overseas. Professor Siddique has an international reputation in agricultural science especially in the fields of crop physiology, production agronomy, farming systems, genetic resources, breeding research in cereal, grain and pasture legumes and oilseed crops. He has published more than 380 scientific papers and book chapters. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Australian Agricultural Institute and Indian National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In 2017, Professor Siddique received the Global Agricultural Research Leadership from the Indian Council of Food and Agriculture (ICAF) for his contribution to Dryland Agriculture. In December 2016, Minister for Agriculture, Government of India honoured Professor Siddique for his outstanding contributions to global pulses research and development. In 2016, Professor Siddique received the Grains Industry Association of Western Australia (GIWA) award for his life time contribution to the pulse industry. Professor Siddique was the UN FAO Special Ambassador for the International Year of Pulses 2016, and is the recipient of national and international awards including: Urrbrae Memorial Award, Member of the Order of Australia (AM), 2014 Western Australian Year of the Award (CitWA) and the Dunhunag Award by China’s Gansu Provincial Government.
Professor Douglas R. Cook is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California-Davis. He is Director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate Resilient Chickpea. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison as a bacterial geneticist and has spent the majority of his professional career working on legume biology at both the fundamental and applied levels. He was among a small group of colleagues who together pioneered the use of Medicago truncatula as a model genetic and genomic system for investigation of legume biology. For the past decade has been a leading advocate for the application of basic legume science towards pressing agricultural needs in the developing world. He currently leads an international consortium focused on the collection and characterization of crop wild relatives of cultivated chickpea, including both culture independent and living collections of the wild and cultivated species’ microbiome.
Dr. Stefanie Christmann worked on Environmental Governance in various positions. She joined ICARDA in 2009, first with duty base in Central Asia, since 2015 in Morocco. Based on the TEEB-approach (show the value of ecosystem services and use it to trigger intrinsic motivation for better protection of ecosystem services), she developed several economically self-sustaining environmental governance approaches to protect biodiversity in the course of climate change. “Farming with Alternative Pollinators (FAP, 2012)” is her most important innovation. Based on different planting instructions, farmers gain higher net income per surface by pollinator protection. FAP obviates rewarding schemes. FAP also includes cross-sector policy instruments affordable for Low and Middle Income Countries. Different to the costly strategies for pollinator protection, which have been recently developed by some countries in the northern hemisphere, FAP has potential to become a globally scalable model for pollinator protection.
Dr. Dil Thavarajah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Clemson University, USA. Prior to her current position, Dil was an Assistant Professor of Pulse Quality and Utilization Laboratory at the North Dakota State University, USA. Dil established the Canadian lentil biofortification program at the Crop Development Center (2007-2010). By training, Dil is a pulse crop physiologist, leads Clemson University’s pulse nutrigenomics research program to combat global food insecurity related human health issues – obesity and malnutrition. Dil’s research collaboration with ICARDA, Morocco led to release ~10-15 biofortified lentil cultivars. Dil published ~55 peer reviewed publications, 10 book chapters, presented >100 conference proceedings. She has been a recipient of USDA-NIFA Foundation, NSF, Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, HarvestPlus, ICARDA, Northern Pulse Growers Association, USA Dry Pea Lentil Council, American Pulse Association, and SC State Department of Agriculture. She has been recognized as “Clemson University School of Health Faculty Research Scholar”.
Dr. Ashutosh Sarker, presently Regional Coordinator of ICARDA’s South Asia & China regional research program based in New Delhi, India has been serving ICARDA for the last 22 years. In his 38 years of research experience in food legume breeding and genetics, Dr Sarker has been directly involved in the development of >47 pulse varieties, majority of them in lentil, released in Bangladesh, Nepal, Syria, Turkey, and India. He is also involved in up-scaling of improved varieties and production technologies of pulses which led to faster adoption, improving farm-income and attaining nutritional security at house-hold level. Dr. Sarker is author of >200 scientific articles in reputed international journals, symposia proceedings, popular articles and book chapters. Dr. Sarker is recipient of several national and international awards in recognition of his contribution to legume science and in improving livelihoods of farmers.
Dr. Rebecca Ford completed her BSc at Griffith University, Australia in 1989 and then spent six formative years working for the sugar industry developing transgenic disease resistant sugarcane varieties. She undertook her PhD at The University of Melbourne, Australia within an ARC-Linkage project with the lentil industry, graduating in 2000. From there, she built on her broad acre cropping industry networks and connections to win and lead four more ARC-Linkage projects and many grains and horticultural industry programs. Moving to Griffith University in 2014, she brought with her and continues to lead the national chickpea pathology program for the Grains Research and Development Program, underpinning Australia’s $1.2b chickpea industry. She also leads the national papaya breeding program, in it’s infancy but about to release six new cultivars. To date, Rebecca has gained in excess of $14m in industry and government funding, mostly directed towards security of staple and desirable food crops through improved sustainable production practices. This has led to >125 HERDC publications, and the successful completion of 29 PhD and 7 MSc candidates, many of whom now occupy senior roles in industry and governmental departments worldwide.
Dr. Donal Sullivan field is crop genetics and he have pursued this topic in various guises for 24 years in Ireland, France and the UK in three Universities and both public and private research institutions. His PhD in molecular plant pathology (specifically genome variability of the common bean anthracnose fungal pathogen) was followed by postdoctoral work on maize and bean structural genomics, and then 10 years as a group/programme leader at NIAB in Cambridge, UK, where he developed a sequence of pioneering cereal association genetics research projects and a toolkit (markers, germplasm) for faba bean genetic and pre-breeding research. In 2013, he took up a research Chair in Crop Science at the University of Reading and currently leads a research group with one over-arching aim: to reveal the subtle genetic architecture of complex, quantitative traits underpinning production of resilient, nutritious crops, primarily wheat and the pulses faba bean and common bean.
Ahmed Amri has PhD in Genetic and Plant Breeding from Kansas State University (1989). He worked at INRA-Morocco for 20 years as cereal breeder and release of 17 barley varieties, 5 triticale and 7 bread wheat and durum varieties resistant to Hessian fly. He worked at ICARDA since 1999 as regional coordinator for a GEF West Asia Dryland Agrobiodiversity project (1999-2005), ICARDA Regional Coordinator for West Asia (2001-2008), Coordinator Iran-ICARDA office (2005-2009) and since 2008, appointed as the Head of Genetic Resources Unit and Deputy Director of the Biodiversity and Integrated Gene Management Program. He has a total of 132 publications including 72 in the refereed journals and advised 27 PhD and MSc students.