Dr. Ranajit Bandyopadhyay

Ranajit Bandyopadhyay, from India, received his BSc (Hons) Agriculture and Animal Husbandry (1974) and MSc degrees from G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology and PhD (1980) from Haryana Agriculture University. Working from ICRISAT-India (1980 to 2001) and IITA-Nigeria (2002 to-date), Bandyopadhyay contributed to the management of seemingly intractable crop diseases in several African nations, India, Brazil, and the U.S. During the past 40 years, Bandyopadhyay has made several significant contributions in research, development, communication, education, and technology transfer to manage seemingly intractable disease problems in Africa, Australia and North and South America. He conducted work central to the control of devastating diseases of diverse crops such as sorghum, soybean, maize, banana, cowpea, cassava, and yams. He co-founded and leads an Africa-wide initiative to scale-up the aflatoxin biocontrol technology based on native atoxigenic strains of Aspergillus flavus to limit crop aflatoxin content. As of 2020, his team registered 14 biocontrol products in 10 African countries while new product development is underway in 12 countries. Commercial partners manufacture and distribute products in eight countries where smallholder farmers have used them in nearly a million acres.