Germany | Banana breeding

2026 Top Agri-food Pioneers: Rony Swennen

Rony Swennen has spent a lifetime transforming banana agriculture and securing its future for smallholder farmers. Joining IITA in 1979, he built the plantain program from scratch and achieved what was deemed impossible by breeding disease-resistant, high-yielding plantain hybrids in the 1980s. At KU Leuven, he developed the first biotech bananas and navigated complex institutional processes to transfer the university’s banana collection into a CGIAR mandate collection, creating a living genebank that supports research in 103 countries. Returning to IITA as Banana Crop Lead in 2013, he modernized the breeding pipeline, shrinking variety development from 35 years to just 10. His work enabled the release of Fusarium- and Sigatoka-resistant cooking bananas in Tanzania and Uganda. Swennen’s impact reaches beyond science, helping farmers in Tanzania’s Kagera region produce 15% more bananas and generate $7 million in additional annual income.