Melaku Worede

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Melaku Worede (Amharic: መላኩ ወረደ; 1936 – 31 July 2023) was an Ethiopian geneticist and agronomist renowned for building one of the finest seed conservation centres in the world, employing science to benefit poor farmers, and saving Africa's seeds from oblivion.

Melaku was born in 1936,^[1] in Shewa, Ethiopia, to Qeñazmach Worede Gebrekidan, an Ethiopian Shewan governor, army commander and aristocrat from Bulga, and Woizero Amsale Wodajeneh, an Ethiopian noblewoman from Shewa and the daughter of Fitawrari Wodajeneh Awgechaw, who was an army commander and viceroy of Ras Lul Seged in Ethiopia's former Solomonic dynasty Kingdom.

Melaku travelled to the US in the 1960s to pursue post-graduate studies. He obtained a PhD in Agronomy with a focus on plant genetics and breeding from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.^[2] After completing his PhD, he returned to Ethiopia and became involved in the planning of the Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Addis Ababa, of which he became Director in 1979. He held this post until his retirement in 1993 to join the Seeds of Survival Programme of Ethiopia, which he founded with the support of a consortium of Canadian NGOs led by the Unitarian Service Committee (USC/Canada).

Melaku was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1989 "for preserving Ethiopia's genetic wealth by building one of the finest seed conservation centres in the world."^[1]

Ethiopia is one of the world's eight 'Vavilov Centres' noted for its great genetic diversity. It is this bio-diversity - now under great threat from drought and modern farming methods - that Melaku has sought to preserve. Further, the Plant Genetic Resources Centre (PGRC) set out to establish 'Strategic Seed Reserves' of traditional varieties that could be released to farmers for planting in times of drought when no other seeds were likely to thrive. In only a few years, Melaku and his staff collected and safely stored a considerable amount of Ethiopia's genetic wealth. In the process, he established not only Africa's finest facility of its kind but also one of the world's premier genetic conservation systems. Melaku built this institution exclusively with Ethiopian staff, training a whole new generation of plant breeders and geneticists in his home country.

Melaku retired from government service to continue and develop his pioneer work on a farming-based native seed (landrace) conservation, enhancement and utilisation. Growing without commercial fertilisers or other chemicals, the locally adapted native seeds developed in this way (e.g. durum wheat) have been shown to exceed their high-input counterparts on average by 10-15% and the original farmers' cultivars by 20-25% in yield.

Melaku was active in the training of several gene bank curators and many other young scientists. Several initiatives to support biodiversity conservation and utilisation in Africa take the Ethiopian experience as their model and are thus attributable to Melaku's ground-breaking work.

Also very active at the international level, Melaku was the first chair of the African Committee for Plant and Genetic Resources and has been instrumental in the setting up of the African Biodiversity Network. He has served as chair of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's Commission on Plant Genetic Resources and was a board member of (among others) the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI) and the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI). In 2008 the National Green Award Foundation, headed by the Ethiopian president, gave Melaku the Outstanding International Contribution Award.

Melaku features in the film Seeds of Justice^[3] which was released in June 2012, and features narration from Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons. The film was produced by The Gaia Foundation and the African Biodiversity Network, both organisations with whom Melaku has been a long-term ally and worked alongside to lead a number of trainings with Field Officers working across Africa. Melaku has three children: Mary Worede, H/Mariam Melaku Worede and Lij Tedla Melaku Worede.

On 31 July 2023, the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI) announced that Melaku had died.^[4][5]