Geoffrey Hawtin

Geoffrey Hawtin is a British and Canadian agricultural scientist and manager with expertise in agrobiodiversity, plant breeding and research management. He led Bioversity International from 1991 to 2003, first as Director of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) and then as Director General of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). In 1994 he oversaw the successful integration within IPGRI of another CGIAR centre, the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBAP). While at Bioversity, he also led the creation of the Crop Trust, an international fund to support key collections of crop genetic diversity, and was its first CEO from 2003 to 2005. 

From 2008-2009 he served as interim Director General of the Cento International de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in Colombia, and two years later joined its Board of Trustees, which he chaired from 2016 to 2019. During this period, he was heavily involved in the establishment of the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, and in 2018 and 2019 he served as co-Chair of the Alliance Board, together with Julia Marton-Lefèvre. 

Geoff has served on many Boards, including those of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, the System Management Board of the CGIAR, CATIE in Costa Rica, and the Crop Trust. He has MA and Ph.D. degrees from Cambridge University, and was awarded an OBE by the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II in 2017 for “services to global agrobiodiversity conservation, subsistence livelihood enhancement and sustainable food programmes”. In 2024, he and Cary Fowler were awarded the World Food Prize “for their extraordinary leadership in preserving and protecting the world's heritage of crop biodiversity and mobilizing this critical resource to defend against threats to global food security.”