About

Dr. V. Ramanatha Rao is an undergraduate from Tirupathi and a postgraduate from APAU, Rajendranagar in agricultural sciences, and did his doctorate in Genetics from IARI, New Delhi in 1975. After briefly working at the All India Coordinated Rice Improvement Project, Rajendranagar, he joined the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad to work on the genetic resources of groundnut. In between, he worked on sabbatical leave at CENARGEN, Brasilia, Brazil to establish Arachis genetic resources collection. While at ICRISAT, he helped in establishing the groundnut germplasm world collection including several wild relatives. He joined IBPGR (International Beaureau of Plant Genetic Resources) (which later became IPGRI (International Plant Genetic Resources Institute), and then Bioversity International). He worked at its offices in Rome, Italy (1989-’92); Singapore (1992-‘96) and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1997-2007). His work ranged widely and covered various aspects of plant genetic resources conservation and use – of both crop and forestry species and covered many PGR disciplines- genetic diversity studies, utilization of germplasm, ex situ, in situ and complementary conservation strategies, and policies and programmes, PGR networks and collaboration, science and application, leadership and teamwork, the balance between IPGRI’s objectives and partners’ needs; at various levels of the organisation- national, subregional, regional, and global levels. He helped several countries in Asia to establish and/or develop national plant genetic resources programmes. He was Honorary Research Fellow with Bioversity International from 2008 to 2014. During the little over 30 years of involvement in PGR work, he has published, over 300 papers/reports/chapters and books. Currently, he is the Co-Founder of GRSV Consulting Services. His main work, with the help of other co-founders and the Chief Editor, was to develop the monthly AgriTech Newsletter.