ROME, MAY 13 – Director General Juan Lucas Restrepo welcomed the Italian Ambassador to the International Organizations in Rome Vincenza Lomonaco and the Director General of Italian Cooperation Giorgio Marrapodi to the headquarters of Bioversity International in Maccarese, just outside of Rome. It was the opportunity to reiterate Bioversity’s strong and longstanding partnership with Italy and to introduce the alliance of Bioversity with CIAT, the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Restrepo said in a message on Twitter.
Bioversity International is a global research-for-development organization with a vision – that agricultural biodiversity nourishes people and sustains the planet. The non-profit organization delivers scientific evidence, management practices and policy options to use and safeguard agricultural biodiversity to attain global food and nutrition security, working with partners in low-income countries in different regions where agricultural biodiversity can contribute to improved nutrition, resilience, productivity and climate change adaptation.
Bioversity International and CIAT are members of the CGIAR, a global research partnership for a food-secure future. Juan Lucas Restrepo, a Colombian-French national, joined as the Director General of Bioversity International on 1 March 2019 and will become CEO of the Alliance between Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in 2020. Among other positions, he has served as the Vice Minister of the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Chief Commercial Officer of the Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers, and for the last eight years as the Executive Director of AGROSAVIA, the largest agricultural research organization of the country. (@OnuItalia)
