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Tag: nutritional quality

Adefris Teklewold Chere

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Adefris Teklewold is a senior scientist and leads the Nutritious Maize for Ethiopia Project (NuME). He is also involved in breeding quality protein maize varieties and seed system development.

NuME fights malnutrition and food insecurity for resource-poor smallholder farmers in Ethiopia, especially among women and young children, through the widespread adoption, production and utilization of quality protein maize. The project is implemented in drought-prone, moist mid-altitude and highland areas of maize growing agroecologies in focal districts of four major maize producing and consuming regions of Ethiopia. NuME was started in 2012 and will conclude in March 2019.

Led by CIMMYT and funded by Global Affairs Canada, NuME is implemented in collaboration with Ethiopian research institutions, international non-governmental organizations, universities, farmer unions and public and private seed companies operating throughout the country.

Natalia Palacios Rojas

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Natalia Palacios’s main area of work is the development of maize germplasm with high nutritional quality, including high quality protein maize, high zinc and high provitamin A maize, the evaluation of nutritional and processing quality of maize under different production systems and the characterization of maize for end-use quality. She has also recently become involved in the safety of maize kernels by evaluating different strategies for aflatoxin control. Her research also includes the development of food processing methods to increase health and nutrition benefits for consumers.

Palacios has worked as a Quality Specialist at CIMMYT since 2005. She studied Microbiology at Andes University in Bogota, Colombia, and completed her doctoral studies in Plant Biology at the University of East Anglia and the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England. She later completed two postdoctoral placements at the University of Dublin, Ireland, and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology, Germany.

Felix San Vicente

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Felix is a maize breeder with broad experience in the study of quantitative genetics and heterosis in tropical maize. He has more than 30 years developing and adapting breeding methods for increasing genetic gains in tropical maize. During his time at CIMMYT, he has developed more than 20 hybrids and 8 open pollinated varieties which are grown commercially in about 500,000 has in 10 countries in Latin America. He has also been part of a team that has released 15 CIMMYT maize lines; elite germplasm used in hybrids by maize breeding programs in at least 25 different countries worldwide.

Currently, Felix coordinates maize breeding activities for Latin America, including Mexico’s and Colombia’s main breeding hubs, targeting lowland tropics, subtropics and highlands. In addition, he leads CIMMYT’s lowland tropical breeding program in intensive collaboration with local and regional partners.

B.M. Prasanna

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B.M. Prasanna is a Distinguished Scientist and Regional Director for Asia at CIMMYT.

Since 2010, Prasanna, as the Global Maize Program Director, has provided technical oversight for a wide range of multi-institutional projects focused on the development and deployment of elite, stress-resilient, and nutritionally enriched maize varieties across the tropics of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has also spearheaded the application of innovative tools and technologies aimed at enhancing genetic gains and improving breeding efficiency.

Prasanna led the CGIAR Research Program MAIZE from 2015 till 2021, an alliance of over 300 research and development institutions globally. He has been at the forefront in tackling the challenges of maize lethal necrosis (MLN) disease in eastern Africa (since 2011), and the Fall Armyworm in Africa and Asia (since 2016 and 2018, respectively).

Together with an array of partners globally, Prasanna and the wider CGIAR team have formulated the OneCGIAR Plant Health Initiative in 2021. Prasanna is currently also serving as the Leader of the Plant Health Initiative, involving 10 CGIAR centers and over 80 national and international partners.

Recipient of several awards and recognitions, Prasanna has published over 200 research articles in various international journals of repute, and has a Scopus h-index of 46, and a Google Scholar h-index of 61.