Dr. Fen Beed, Plant Pathologist for East and Central Africa, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Dr. Beed is an experienced plant pathologist based at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He leads research for development activities to mitigate the impact of diseases of maize, soybean, cowpea, cassava, banana and vegetables and promotes plant diseases on problematic weeds. Before joining IITA in 2000, Fen worked as a research scientist at the University of Nottingham, UK and simultaneously served as a consultant for ADAS (the executive arm of UK government’s Ministry of Agriculture) studying field interactions between crop physiology and pathogen epidemiology and the influence of environmental conditions.
Prior to Nottingham he worked and studied at the Universities of Sheffield, Strathclyde and University College London, the UK where he focused on biochemical interactions between plant hosts and their fungal pathogens. His first position in IITA was in Benin where he developed a weed biological control programme using fungal pathogens with targets such as water hyacinth, speargrass and Striga and, due to demand from across the region then developed a plant pathogen diagnostic clinic supported by a microbial reference collection. He moved in 2007 to IITA Kampala, Uganda and created systems for the surveillance, diagnostics and management of banana disease across the Great Lakes Region. In 2010 he moved to the IITA regional hub in Tanzania where he has continued his research profile and added food safety issues including mycotoxins prevalence studies, biological control of aflatoxins and vegetable IPM to increase grower and consumer safety.
Email: [email protected]