Rodomiro Ortiz works as Chair Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and holds both BSc-Biology and MSc-Plant Breeding & Statistics from the UNALM (National Agricultural University of Peru), and a PhD-Plant Breeding & Genetics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA). He worked as researcher at UNALM, Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP) in Perú, Rutgers University in New Jersey (USA) and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria, 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, 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, and 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, and served as part-time Special Advisor to the Deputy-Director General 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 independent free-lance 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 in plantain and banana improvement, in which Ortiz was both a hands-on researcher and program leader. In 2010, UNALM Graduate School acknowledges him as an outstanding alumnus in plant breeding due to his international research and teaching. Plant Breeding Reviews dedicated him its volume 36 (2012). 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 Basin for food security, having him as PI. He got in 2022 the Bertebos Prize -instituted in 1996 by Brita and Olof Stenström as a means of promoting education and research in the food chain- for using new molecular scientific methods, and being a driving force in the breeding of crops of great importance for food supply in America, Africa and Europe. Professor Ortiz is fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA) and the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund (KFS).
Basic, strategic and applied research in crop improvement. Experience in self- and cross-pollinated species, which have disomic, trisomic, tetrasomic and hexasomic inheritance, sexual and vegetative propagation, plus annual and perennial production.
Breeding efforts concentrated on the utilization of exotic germplasm for the development of elite progenitors and cultivars adapted to the environmental conditions in which they would be grown.
Strong interest in quantitative and population genetics, especially for germplasm conservation and genetic enhancement, and for the improvement of current breeding techniques. Another important area of my research was to evaluate the types of gene action for economically important traits and techniques to improve breeding efficiency.
10 most cited (> 150) journal articles
1. Ortiz, Rodomiro, K.D. Sayre, B. Govaerts, R. Gupta, G.V. Subbarao, T. Ban, D. Hodson, J.M. Dixon, J.I. Ortiz-Monasterio & M. Reynolds. 2008. Climate change: can wheat beat the heat? Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 126, 46–58
2. Crossa, J., J. Burgueño, S. Dreisigacker, M. Vargas, S. Herrera, M. Lillemo, R.P. Singh, R. Trethowan, J. Franco, M. Warburton, M. Reynolds, J.H. Crouch & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2007. Association analysis of historical bread wheat germplasm using additive genetic covariance of relatives and population structure. Genetics 177, 1889–1913
3. Campbell, B.M., D.J. Beare, E.M. Bennett, J. Hall-Spencer, J.S.I. Ingram, F. Jaramillo, Rodomiro Ortiz, N. Ramankutty & J.A. Sayer. 2017. Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries. Ecology and Society 22(4), 8. DOI: 10.5751/ES-09595-220408
4. Abera Desta, Z. & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2014. Genomic selection: Genome-wide breeding value prediction in plant improvement. Trends in Plant Science 19, 592–601
5. 4. Upadhyaya, H.D. & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2001. A minicore subset for capturing diversity and promoting utilization of chickpea genetic resources in crop improvement. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 102, 1292–1298
6. Sanginga, N., K.E. Dashiell, J. Diels, B. Vanlauwe, O, Lyasse, R.J. Carsky, S. Tarawali, B. Asafo-Adjei, A. Menkir, S. Schulz, B.B. Singh, D. Chikoye, D. Keatinge & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2003. Sustainable resource management coupled to resilient germplasm to provide new intensive cereal-grain-legume-livestock systems in the dry savanna. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment 100, 305–314
7. Dwivedi, S.L., S. Cecarelli, M. Blair, H. Upadhyaya, A.K Are & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2016. Landrace germplasm: a useful resource for improving yield and abiotic stress adaptation. Trends in Plant Science 21, 31–42
8. Bassi, F., A. Bentley, G. Charmet, Rodomiro Ortiz & J. Crossa. 2016. Breeding schemes for the implementation of genomic selection in wheat (Triticum spp.). Plant Science 242, 23–36
9. Upadhyaya, H.D., Rodomiro Ortiz, P.J. Bramel & S. Singh. 2003. Development of groundnut core subset using taxonomic, geographical and morphological descriptors. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 50, 139–148
10. Kole, C., M. Muthamilarasan, R. Henry, D. Edwards, R. Sharma, M. Abberton, J. Batley, A. Bentley, M. Blakeney, J. Bryant, H. Cai, M. Cakir, L. Cseke, J. Cockram, A. Costa de Oliveira, C. De Pace, H. Dempewolf, S. Ellison, P. Gepts, A. Greenland, A.E. Hall, K. Hori, G. Howe, S. Hughes, M. Humphreys, M. Ioirizzo, A. Ismail, A. Marshall, S. Mayes, H.T. Nguyen, F.C. Ogbonnaya, Rodomiro Ortiz, A.H. Paterson, P. Simon, R. Tuberosa, B. Valliyodan, R. Varshney S. Wullschleger, M. Yano & M. Prasad. 2015. Application of genomics for generation of climate resilient crops: progress and prospects. Frontiers in Plant Sciences 6, 563.
DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2015.00563
5 selected articles from last 3 years
1. Ortiz, Rodomiro, J. Crossa, F. Reslow, P. Pérez-Rodríguez & J.D. Cuevas. 2022. Genome-based genotype × environment prediction enhances potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) improvement using pseudo-diploid and polysomic tetraploid modeling. Frontiers in Plant Science 13, 785196. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.785196
2. Dwivedi, S.L., M.P. Reynolds & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2021. Mitigating tradeoffs in plant breeding. iScience 10, 102965. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102965
3. Ortiz, Rodomiro, M. Geleta, C. Gustafsson, I. Lager, P. Hofvander, C. Löfstedt, E.B. Cahoon, E. Minina, P. Bozhkov & S. Stymne. 2020. Oil crops for the future. Current Opinion in Plant Biology DOI: 10.1016/j.pbi.2019.12.003
4. Van Ginkel, M. & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2018. Cross the best with the best and select the best: HELP in breeding selfing crops. Crop Science 58, 1-14
5. Dwivedi, S.L., S. Ceccarelli, S. Grando, E. Lammerts van Bueren, H.D. Upadhyaya & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2017. Diversifying food systems in the pursuit of sustainable food production and healthy diets. Trends in Plant Science 22, 842-856
Books
von Bothmer, R., O. Díaz, T. Fagerström, S. Jansson, F. Ortega Klose, Rodomiro Ortiz & M. Sánchez. Más Alla de los OGM. Ciencia y Fitomejoramiento para una Agricultura Sostenible. Imprenta América S.A., Santiago Chile. 204 pp.
Ortiz, Rodomiro, D. Eriksson, R.G.F. Visser, H. Prieto & J.A.V. Valls (eds.). 2020. Leeway to Operate with Plant Genetic Resources. Frontiers Media SA, Lausanne, Switzerland. 149 pp. DOI: 10.3389/978-2-88966-008-7.
Maxted, N., D. Hunter & Rodomiro Ortiz. 2020. Plant Genetic Conservation. Cambridge University Press. 546 pp.
Lobos, G.A., A.V. Camargo, A. del Pozo, J.L. Araus, Rodomiro Ortiz & J.H. Doonan (eds.). 2018. Plant Phenotyping and Phenomics for Plant Breeding. Frontiers Media, Lausanne, Switzerland. 367 pp. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88945-532-4
Ortiz, Rodomiro. 2017. IITA: 50 Years After. Transforming Africa’s Agriculture and Nourishing Rural Development. International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria. 112 pp. http://www.iita.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IITA@50_FINAL_2_AFKARPRESS_ALL.pdf
Pritchard, B., Rodomiro Ortiz & M. Shekar (eds.). 2016. Routledge Handbook of Food and Nutrition Security. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, Oxford, United Kingdom. 524 pp.
Ortiz, Rodomiro. 2015. Plant Breeding in the Omics Era. Springer International Publishing, New York. 249 pp.
Google Scholar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=cxQ_518AAAAJ&hl=en
Loop https://loop.frontiersin.org/people/202395/bio
Research Gate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rodomiro_Ortiz
Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodomiro-ortiz-7677285