Dr Essegbemon Akpo is Seed Systems scientist with expertise in plant production, seed systems, innovation studies, participatory action research, and multi-stakeholder processes. He graduated from Wageningen University, The Netherlands. His 15 years experiences in agricultural research for development covered improved seed access facilitation for smallholder farmers, connection between biophysical, social and institutional landscapes, participatory technology development, innovation platform support, capacity building for farmers organizations. He earned several academic awards that permitted him to pursue graduate studies (Research grant within the Convergence of Science Strengthening Agricultural Innovation Systems (CoS-SIS) in 2008, Research grant as part of the Convergence of Science for better Management of Crops and Soils (CoS) Project- DGIS in 2005, Research grant as part of the Cowpea Project, Bénin, NWO-FAO in 2003). Dr Akpo has authored over 15 publications including peer-review papers, books and conferences papers.
Dr. Chris Ojiewo graduated from Okayama University, Japan. He is a Senior Scientist in Legume Breeding, Global Co-coordinator of Tropical Legumes III, HOPEII and AVISA projects (funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation), Cluster of Activities Leader on Science of Scaling Seed Technologies in the CGIAR Research Program (CRP) on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals and Theme Leader of Seed Systems in the Global Research Program on Genetic Gains, ICRISAT. He has more than 60 peer reviewed international publications and has delivered numerous oral and posters presentations in numerous international meetings. Dr Ojiewo s research work focusses on basic, applied, and adaptive research and development activities aimed at raising farm productivity, nutrition and income security for resource-poor smallholder farm households, especially women and youth in rural and peri-urban semi-arid tropics. With expertise in plant breeding andseed systems, he has done extensive work in the development and dissemination of high-yielding and stress (biotic and abiotic) resilient varieties of vegetables and legumes with farmer and market preferred traits together with accompanying integrated crop management practices and efficient seed and technology dissemination systems. Besides, promotion of vegetable-legume-cereal-livestock based family garden intensification systems, improving productivity and profitability for small-holder farmers, gender equity, youth empowerment, nutrition security, knowledge sharing and solving the perpetual problem of food and nutritional insecurity of the less privileged in developing countries are core to his sense of purpose.
Dr. Lucky O. Omoigui graduated from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria Nigeria in 2010. He is a Seed System specialist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kano Station. He has more than 74 peer reviewed international publications andhas delivered numerous oral and poster presentations in numerous international meetings. Dr Omoigui was an Associate Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Makurdi from 2013-2016. He received several awards among which are: Most Outstanding Researcher in the University of Agriculture Makurdi in 2012, Excellent Research contribution to West African Cowpea Consortium in 2015, Arthur Anderson Honour list Award for Best Graduating Student in 1999.
Dr. Jean Claude Rubyogo is a CIAT Senior Scientist based in Arusha Tanzania. He focuses on seed systems research and development, technology transfer and research product commercialization. For more than thirty years, he has contributed/ led several research and development initiatives in various agricultural research areas including participatory crop research (both on station and on farm), testing agricultural technologies and partnership to commercialize and scale up these proven technologies. For the last fifteen years, he has been leading public private multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary teams developing and deploying sustainable and impact oriented bean seed systems to serve more than 27 million of smallholder farmers (58% being women) across several member countries of the Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance. Jean Claude has extensively published several articles, books and book chapters on bean seed systems and technology transfer.
Dr Rajeev K Varshney, Research Program Director, Genetic Gains & Director, Center of Excellence in Genomics and Systems Biology at ICRISAT, has > 15 years research experience in international agriculture. Before joining ICRISAT in 2005, he worked at IPK-Gatersleben, Germany for five years. While working at ICRISAT, in his dual appointment for six year, he also served CGIAR Generation Challenge Program as Theme Leader. Varshney is recognized as a leader in applied genomics, genomics-assisted breeding and translational genomics for agriculture. He has genome sequences of 9 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 of Leopoldina- German National Academy of Sciences, American Association of Advancement in Sciences (USA), The World Academy of Sciences, Crop Sciences Society of America, American Society of Agronomy and all 4 leading science academies of India: Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, The National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He provides leadership by serving as member/chair for several committees, editorial boards, funding organizations and advisory boards in international agriculture research, development and capacity building.
