IFA Podcasts

Dr Simon Attwood is an expert in land conservation and management. He has helped to design and deliver the Australian Government’s Environmental Stewardship Program and more recently worked on projects in South East Asia and the Pacific to improve ecosystem services for rural community development and biodiversity conservation. Simon led the Ecological Intensification of Farming Systems team at Bioversity International, where he also co-developed the Agrobiodiversity Index, and was most recently Director of Conservation with WWF Singapore, where he worked on a range of conservation and sustainability challenges in South East Asia.

Dr Achim Dobermann is a soil scientist and agronomist with over 30 years work experience in all world regions. His main interests lie in science and technology solutions for food security and sustainable management of the world’s major agricultural systems. After completing leadership roles at Rothamsted Research and the International Rice Research Institute he now works as IFA’s Chief Scientist and in other strategic science advisory roles.

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 in Mexico City (Cereal Genomics) and at Caltech (Chemical Engineering). He is currently a Professor and the International Relations Officer in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, Canada. The focus of the Raizada Lab is to develop low cost technologies that reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides to grow corn and other crops including legumes, replacing them with beneficial microbes and the use of biosensors, with a focus on North Ame rica, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Meadows-Smith Marcus holds a degree in Biological Sciences, Genetics from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. He is currently CEO of BioConsortia, a discoverer of microbial crop protection and crop enhancement products. Prior to that, he turned around the biopesticide business AgraQuest Inc. over a four-year timeframe, signing partnership agreements between a bio-ag company and several big agchemical giants, culminating in Marcus’ company being acquired by Bayer CropScience for over $400 million. Following Bayer’s acquisition of AgraQuest, he became head of biologics for Bayer CropScience. Previously, Meadows-Smith had a 14-year career at Chemtura Corporation.

Tom Bruulsema Based in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, Tom Bruulsema is Chief Scientist with Plant Nutrition Canada, working with industry, environmental, and scientific groups to lead agricultural service providers in advancing sustainability. He has served for over 25 years with industry-supported science organizations, leading and contributing to projects on the interactions of crop nutrition with health-functional foods, greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and eutrophication in Lake Erie. Recent achievements include contributions to nutrient stewardship certification programs in the United States and Canada, and to international initiatives in sustainable management of nitrogen and phosphorus.

Dr. Pytrik Reidsma is Associate Professor at Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University. Her work focuses on sustainability and resilience of farming systems. She has expertise in integrated assessment of agricultural systems, considering impacts on different dimensions of sustainable development (economic, environmental, social), considering different drivers (climate change, policy, markets, technological development), at multiple scales (crop, farm, region, continent; with a focus on the farm level), using a range of methods (statistical analyses, crop modelling, bio-economic farm modelling, Geographic Information Systems, agent-based modelling and participatory approaches).

 

Professor Patrick du Jardin is Senior Scientist, Professor of Plant Biology at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liège since 1996, of which he was Dean of faculty in the period 2007-2009. He is an expert in plant physiology and nutrition and his current research is focused on the action of microbial and non-microbial biostimulants on crop plants. He was chairman of the scientific committee of the 4th world congress on the Agricultural uses of Biostimulants. Patrick has a long-standing expertise in the risk assessment of agricultural technologies and was vice-chair of the EFSA GMO panel between 2012 and 2015. He has also been a member of the ethics committee of the French Institutes INRA and Cirad.

Dr. Prem Warrior is the Chief Operating Officer at Valagro, a leading company in the biostimulants space. Previously, he was a Senior Regional Advisor on the Agricultural Development team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle. He concurrently served as a Senior Program Officer and the Team Leader for the Postharvest & Markets group at the Gates foundation. Prem has a PhD in Plant Pathology/Nematology and an MBA in general business. He has published more than 70 scientific peer-reviewed publications, has over 80 international patents and has been associated with the discovery and development of several agricultural products including insecticide, nematicide, plant growth regulators and biostimulants.