The rector of Wageningen University in the Netherlands will become director general of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) on June 1. Martin Kropff will succeed Thomas Lumpkin, who has been CIMMYT chief since 2008. Kropff has a long record as an agricultural researcher and academic.
CIMMYT is a leader in international plant research. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug, whose high-yielding and disease-resistant wheat varieties started the Green Revolution of the 1960s, was the first director of CIMMYT’s wheat-breeding program.