Martin Kropff
Director General, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT
Martin Kropff joined the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in 2015 from Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands, where he was president and vice chairman of the executive board for almost 10 years.
He earned undergraduate degrees in biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in agricultural and environmental sciences at Wageningen.
From 1990 to 1995, Kropff was the systems agronomist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines where he led an international program with national agricultural research systems and Universities in nine Asian countries on systems research and simulation for rice production.
After 1995, he served successive roles at Wageningen UR, including as director general of the Plant Sciences Group and on the executive board. From 2013 to 2015, he was a member of the board of directors of the CGIAR, the 15-member consortium of international agricultural researchers to which CIMMYT and IRRI belong.