Jérôme Bartholomé

Jérôme is a rice geneticist and breeder working within the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT's rice program in Palmira, Colombia, as a CIRAD scientist. He leads the CIAT-CIRAD rice breeding program and contributes to shaping the Alliance's rice breeding strategy for Latin America and the Caribbean.

His current research focuses on developing climate-smart and nutritious rice varieties that respond to the needs of farmers, consumers, and rice value chains across the region. His work combines adaptation to changing and more challenging production environments with improved nutritional quality, particularly high zinc content. He also contributes to the modernization of rice breeding through quantitative genetics, genomics, and data-driven selection approaches, with the goal of accelerating genetic gain and delivering better varieties more efficiently.

A central component of his work is collaboration with national breeding programs and other partners across Latin America and the Caribbean. Through the development and exchange of improved germplasm, joint variety development, and capacity strengthening, he contributes to building more effective and connected rice breeding networks in the region.

Jérôme holds a Ph.D. in plant quantitative genetics and genomics from Institut Agro Montpellier. He joined CIRAD in 2017 and worked at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines from 2018 to 2021, where he contributed to the modernization of the irrigated rice breeding program, including the implementation of genomic selection and the analysis of genetic diversity and genetic gain.