Rodomiro Ortiz is Chair Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Alnarp, Sweden. He has written over 800 publications and was the leader of a multidisciplinary team working on a plantain and banana improvement project that CGIAR awarded the 1994 King Baudouin Award to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) for. He was also Co-Principal Investigator for a SLU/ICARDA-led project that won the 2017 Olam Prize for Innovation in Food Security.