Biographies of Contributors | Pest & Disease Risk Management in Cocoa, Coffee and Rice

Dr. Alan MacLeod

Pest Risk Analyst, The Food and Environment Research Agency, UK

Alan MacLeod is a researcher and pest risk analyst at The Food and Environment Research Agency, UK. He has worked on assessing the risks presented to plants in the UK and in the wider European region by exotic pests and diseases since 1995. Alan is a member of the European Plant Protection Organisation (EPPO) Panel for Development of Pest Risk Analysis (PRA). He has led and collaborated on a number of European wide projects related to pest risk. Alan has a particular interest in delivering PRA training programmes around the world and has worked delivering such training in Asia and Africa. 

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Dr. Julian Smith

International Development Lead, The Food and Environment Research Agency, UK

Dedicated to forging partnerships in crop health between northern and southern hemisphere institutions that build towards one-world outcomes, Julian Smith has 20 years experience in agriculture and international development.  Trained as a plant bacteriologist and molecular biologist, Julian has worked with crops as varied as potato to banana to coconut and cassava, and in countries of East Africa, South America and Asia.  A particular interest has been in promoting investment in ‘crop pest outbreak prevention, better than cure’ research and policy interventions.

Julian studied at Aberystwyth University in the UK, completing a BSc in Agricultural Botany and a PhD on Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae and the potential in the UK for inoculating Vicia faba.  He joined CAB International in 1992, where he headed areas of molecular biology and biotechnology (genetically modified organisms).  In 2005, he moved to Central Science Laboratory at York, which later transferred to the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera).  At Fera Julian leads for International Development. Read this article.

 

 

 

Jeffery Bentley

Agricultural Anthropologist, International Consultant

Jeff Bentley is an agricultural anthropologist with a PhD from the University of Arizona. He has lived in Portugal, Samoa, Honduras, Peru and Bolivia. Bentley was in the Crop Protection Department at Zamorano, Honduras for seven years and has been an international consultant since 1995, working in Latin America, Africa and Asia for CABI, IICA, CIP, FAO, USAID, DFID, AfricaRice, Agroinsight, URS, Creative Associates International and others.  Read this article

 

 

 

Peter Baker

Peter Baker has over 30 years’ experience in research, training and consultancy in the broad area of science for development with particular experience in coffee, including sustainable coffee production, farmer participatory approaches, biodiversity and smallholder farmer issues. He worked on the CBB problem in southern Mexico and for the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros in Colombia. He now concentrates mostly on developing practical ways to help coffee farmers adapt to climate change. Read this article

 

 

 

Geoff Gurr

Professor, Charles Sturt University, Australia

Geoff Gurr is Professor of Applied Ecology at Charles Sturt University in Australia and visiting professor at Zhejiang University and Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University in China.  He trained at Imperial College, Rothamstead Experimental Station and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge. Over the last two decades he has worked on the ecology and management of pests in systems as diverse as pastures and forests.  Much of his recent work has been with collaborators throughout Asia where insecticide resistance in sucking pests of rice has driven the development and adoption of biodiversity-based management strategies.  Such approaches can also provide additional ecosystem services such as enhanced pollination and provide habitat for wildlife so help reconcile the need to produce food for a burgeoning human population whilst simultaneously using farms to conserve biodiversity.  Read this article

 

 

 

Christian Joseph R. Cumagun

Professor, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB)

Crhistian Cumagun is a professor of plant pathology at the Crop Protection Cluster, College of Agriculture, University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB). He obtained his B.S. Agriculture and M.S .in Plant Pathology from UPLB and his Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (magna cum laude) from the University of Hohenheim, Germany He received a pre-doctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and postdoctoral fellowship at Kobe University, Japan. He has published over 30 articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals. Among his notable awards are: The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) in Agricultural Sciences by the Junior Chamber International, Philippines and the Outstanding Young Scientist (OYS) by the National Academy of Science and Technology (NAST), Philippines. He is currently appointed a Young Affiliate of The Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) based in Trieste, Italy.  Read this article

 

 

 

Dr. Yeshi Wamishe 

Extension Rice Pathologist | University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service

Yeshi’s life started humbly, picking weeds from wheat, barley, pea, bean, and flax farms and tending to sheep and cattle.  For girls especially, in her native country, education was not often an option, but through steadfast work and determination, she pursued a Bachelor of Science in Biology while simultaneously teaching biology and chemistry in high schools and then began teaching at the then Alemaya College, a junior agricultural college, upon graduation.  She then turned her focus to pursuing a Master of Science in Botany, completing a thesis in plant pathology, and afterward, she received eight months of training in wheat breeding and pathology at the CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, which spurred her interest in research. Yeshi then came to the U.S. in August of 1998 to pursue new opportunities and education.  She earned  her Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from the University of Arkansas in 2002.  Under the advising of Dr. Gene Milus, Yeshi completed her dissertation, Resistance to leaf rust in soft red winter wheat. Her work with Dr. Milus resulted in the identification of the most probable genes that may be present in contemporary lines of winter wheat for leaf rust resistance, which are believed to be the most useful to wheat breeders and farmers. Read this article

 

 

 

David Guest

Professor of Plant Pathology, The University of Sydney

David Guest is the Professor of Plant Pathology and Associate Dean (Development) in The Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources at The University of Sydney. His current research interests include understanding plant disease resistance mechanisms, and using this knowledge to manage Phytophthora diseases in tropical horticulture and in Australian ecosystems. He teaches undergraduate courses at all levels and has supervised over 20 PhD and Research Masters students. His extensive fieldwork activities involve partnerships with research institutes and farming communities around the Asia-Pacific region, funded from a range of sources including the ARC, ACIAR, AusAID, the Crawford Fund, CENIPALMA and FAO. He is a Fellow and Past-President of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society and current President of the Asian Association of Societies of Plant Pathology.  Read the Article

 

 

 

Robert Waggwa Nsibirwa

CEO, Africa Coffee Academy and Vice President, Uganda Coffee Federation

Robert Waggwa Nsibirwa is a practicing entrepreneur co–owning and running enterprises in beverage manufacturing, commodity training/consulting, business development consulting and real estate development.

Currently Robert is a President and CEO of the Africa Coffee Academy, an institution involved in trading in coffee equipment and machinery, training of coffee professionals and consultancy.  He is also the Executive Director of Victoria Beverages Limited and mineral water manufacturing firm and the Business Director of Quilibra a consulting and resource facility supporting leaders and teams working in changing and challenging development contexts. Read this Article

 

 

 

Martijn ten Hoopen

Epidemiologist, CIRAD

Martijn ten Hoopen is an epidemiologist working with the French Centre for International cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development, CIRAD. He is a cocoa specialist with extensive experience on pest and disease control obtained in Central America (Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua) and Africa (Cameroon). Martijn earned his PhD from the University of London while working with CAB International on the development of biological control options for cocoa diseases. Now based in Cameroon, his current activities are oriented towards the understanding and quantification of ecological control services of pests and diseases in agroforestry systems. Read the Article

 

 

 

Régis Babin

Entomologist, CIRAD

Régis Babin is an entomologist working with the French Centre for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development, CIRAD.

He worked for 10 years on the ecology of cocoa and coffee pests in agroforestry systems in Central Africa. His fields of study are tropical pest biology and population ecology, with recent activities on population genetics.  Read this Article

 

 

Jacques Avelino

Plant Pathologist, CIRAD

Jacques Avelino is a plant pathologist, with a PhD degree of the University of Orsay, Paris, France. He has been working for CIRAD (Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement), France, since 1986. He spent almost 26 years conducting research primarily on coffee and cacao pests and diseases in four Mesoamerican countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica. He also worked on coffee quality for 10 years. He is now posted at CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza), Costa Rica, since 2007, within the scientific partnership platform on agroforestry systems with perennial crops.

He has mainly studied the relationships between pest and disease epidemics, the environment and crop management. During the last four years he led different studies on the effect of plant biodiversity on coffee pests and diseases at the plot and landscape scales within the framework of the Omega3 project. He was a member of the coordination cell of this project. Read the Article

 

 

 

Alain Ratnadass

Head of Agroecology, CIRAD's HortSys Unit

Alain Ratnadass holds MSc (1982) and PhD (1987) degrees in Crop Protection from the National Institute of Agronomy, Paris, and an accreditation to supervise research degree (DSc, 2007) from the National Institute of Applied Sciences/University of Lyons.

Currently (since 2008), Head of the Agroecology team of CIRAD’s HortSys (Horticultural Systems) research unit, he coordinated CIRAD’s Omega3 (“Optimization of ecological mechanisms of pest and disease management for sustainable improvement of agrosystem productivity”) project from 2008-11. He held two Principal Scientist in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) positions on joint ICRISAT-CIRAD projects in Mali (from 1989-2000) and Niger (2007-2011), and directed CIRAD’s « Sustainable Rice Cropping Systems » Cooperative Research Unit in Madagascar from 2001-2007. He was also posted in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic. His experience encompasses several cereal, legume, root & tuber, vegetable and fruit crops, with emphasis on agroecological management of crop pests, host plant resistance, soil biology, plant-derived pesticides and post-harvest entomology.  Read this Article