Rodomiro Ortiz

Dr. Rodomiro Ortiz works as a Chair Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. He worked as a researcher at UNALM, Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP) in Perú, Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria. He held a Nordic professorship in plant genetic resources at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (KVL) in Denmark, and was Director of the Genetic Resources and Enhancement Program at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India. He was Deputy-Director General, Director of Research for Development, Director of the Crop Improvement Division, and Officer in Charge of the High Rainfall Station, Nigeria and the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Centre (Uganda) of IITA. He was also the Director of the Intensive Agro-ecosystems Program, Director of Resource Mobilization and Senior Advisor to the Director General at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT) in Mexico. He served as part-time Special Advisor to the Deputy-Director General of Research of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA, Syria), as part-time Science Advisor of the interim Consortium Office of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and as an independent freelance consultant for international, regional and national organizations. In 1994, the CGIAR awarded IITA the prestigious King Baudouin Award for the multidisciplinary research of the team working on plantain and banana improvement, in which Dr. Ortiz was both a hands-on researcher and program leader. In 2010, UNALM Graduate School acknowledged him as an outstanding alumnus in plant breeding, attributed to his international research and teaching. Plant Breeding Reviews dedicated its volume 36 (2012) to Dr. Ortiz. The 2017 Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security was awarded to the SLU/ICARDA–led research development partnership project ‘Adapting durum wheat varieties to the Senegal River Basin’ for food security, where he was co-PI. Dr. Ortiz holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Plant Breeding and Statistics from the UNALM (National Agricultural University of Peru), and a PhD in Plant Breeding & Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.