Lewis Machida

Lewis Machida works with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (ABC) as an Associate Scientist in the Banana Characterization and Evaluation team under the Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture Lever. Based in Kampala, he is the team’s focal point for the development and execution of field work in Banana Characterization and Evaluation in Uganda.

Lewis’ interests are in morphological and physiological systematic field characterization and evaluation of banana germplasm to support banana researchers in developing and identifying drought tolerant and climate smart banana genotypes. He has more than 20 years serving in the Southern and East Africa regions in maize, tobacco, and banana improvement sectors. This empowered him with experience and knowledge in working with seed systems for cross pollinated, self-pollinated and clonally propagated crop species. Most of his career he was a maize field breeder with interests in drought and moisture stress tolerance breeding in addition to the must have traits for the maize value chains in East and Southern Africa.

Before joining the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, Lewis bred, released, and registered several maize inbred lines and hybrids, and tobacco cultivars whilst working with the Crop Breeding Institute of the Department of Research and Specialist Services (DR&SS), Monsanto, and the Tobacco Research Board (TRB) of Zimbabwe. Lewis’ working experience spans across the national public sector (DR&SS), private sector (Cargill Hybrid Seeds and Monsanto) and CGIAR (CIMMYT and ABC).

Lewis co-authored several peer-reviewed, conference and symposia publications on plant breeding and crop improvement. He is a graduate of the University of Zimbabwe (B.Sc. Agriculture Honors, and MBA), University of Birmingham and University of Reading (M.Phil.), and University of KwaZulu Natal (D.Phil.). Lewis is a national of Zimbabwe and has interest in learning spoken languages.