About Peter & Odila Griffee
Peter Griffee
Peter retired from the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome in April 2006 as Senior Officer for industrial crops (oilseeds, medicinal and aromatic plants, bio-fuels, fibres, beverages, elastomers, etc.)
Some of Peter’s major activities at FAO included:
- Management and sharing of knowledge through the Internet. (Books, plant records, photographs, references, glossary terms, methodologies, crop environmental requirements etc).
- Collaboration with the World Health Organization and others on Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP) for medicinal plants, including the anti-malarial Artemisia annua.
- The expansion of the cold-tolerant oil palm in E. Africa, for example in W. Kenya at 1500 masl. Isolated villages now have the healthy red palm oil (RPO) in their gardens, this has a long shelf life, supplies vitamins A and E, cooking oil and soap.
- Introduction of the new drought and saline tolerant sweet sorghum hybrids for ethanol production and ethanol and co-generation of electricity from sugarcane.
- Work with IFAD and others on Jatropha curcas as a bio-diesel.
CV Highlights
44 years of post-graduate multidisciplinary experience in production of annual and perennial crops generally; including major and underutilized species. Retired April 2006 from being a senior officer, industrial crops, at FAO, Rome.
Education
1966 MSc (honours) in Agronomy – Bath University, 1967; MSc (distinction) in Plant Pathology – Imperial College, London; 1982 Diploma in Forestry Planning and Management – Oxford University. Various management courses during career.
Experience
Countries
Resided in: Zambia (3 years), St. Lucia (3), Brazil (19), Tunisia (3), Italy (16).
Worked in: (from a few days to over 1 month); Austria, Bolivia, Cameroon, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Honduras, Hungary, India, Iran, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Portugal, Slovenia, South Africa, Swaziland, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Windward Is., Switzerland, UK, USA.
Worked with: (on projects); Afghanistan, Algeria, Australia, Bangladesh, Benin, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Dominica, Egypt, Ghana, Latvia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panamá, Paraguay, Rep. Congo, Sierra Leon, Syria, Togo, Uganda, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yemen, To be continued…
Employers (main)
- FAO: Senior Officer, Industrial crops – Italy – 1995 to April 2006 (retired).
- Shell: Horticulture – Tunisia – 1991–1994 (manager of export project; flowers, grapes etc)
- NRI: Amazonian medicinal plants 1990–1991
- Rhone-Poulenc (via Meyhall Switzerland): Plant breeder – Brazil – 1989–1990 (introduction of guar to Brazil)
- Ultra Group: Natural resources Brazil – 1985–1989 (plant acids for the chemical industry)
- Shell: Forestry – Brazil – 1979–84 (manager of a 120,000 ha alternative energy farm)
- Shell: Plant breeder – Brazil – 1973–1978 (soybean, cotton etc)
- ODA (NRI): Plant pathologist – Windward Islands – 1970–72 (banana diseases)
- Crown Agents: Plant pathologist – Zambia – 1967–69 (responsible for Copperbelt region)
Crops (Industrial)
Perennial and regenerative
- Oils; – coconut, oil palm, castor, olive, jojoba, jatropha, shea nut, moringa, eucalyptus
- Gums and resins; – pines, gum-arabic
- Sugars; – sugarcane, sweet sorghum
- Beverages; – cocoa, tea, coffee, mate
- Food additives; – annatto
- Fibers; – pine, eucalyptus, cotton, kenaf, musa
- Elastomers; – rubber, gauyale
- Medicinal & aromatic; – annual wormwood, eucalyptus, rosewood, piper, ylang, aloe, etc.
- Plus many under- utilised palms & trees
Annual
- Oils; – castor, cuphea, rape, safflower, samphire, sesame, soybean, sunflower, vernonia
- Gums – guar
- Sugars; – sweet sorghum, sugar beet, stevia
- Food additives; – African marigold, annatto
- Floriculture; various
- Medicinal & aromatic; – many
- Plus many under- utilised species
Crops (Food)
Maize, wheat, sorghum, vegetables, grapes, bananas, citrus, etc.
Crops (Underutilized species)
My main work on underutilized species began in 1987 when I represented industry (through the Ultra Group) in the Brazilian CNPq (National Research Center) programme on ‘pioneer crops’. This continued in the Ultra Group as I worked with novel species for fatty acids for the chemical industry such as Cuphea sp. The work intensified when I joined FAO where I work closely with the International Center for Underutilized Crops (ICUC), the Purdue NewCROP Programme and represent FAO as the alternate chair of the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species (GFU) housed at IPGRI. In this respect I represented FAO/GFU at the Swaminatham workshop on underutilized species and the Millennium Development Goal of Hunger and Poverty which concentrated on food species. In the resulting Chennai Declaration I was instrumental in introducing medicinal plants, bio-fuels, cultivars and climate change to the final version. To be continued…
Disciplines
Project formulation and management (in environments from semi-arid through moist savannah to humid tropics), genetic resource collection and evaluation, breeding, trials management, research, propagation, pest management, irrigation, production & processing, marketing, environmental protection, agro-forestry, diversification, mixed cropping systems, IT, data bases, resource management, economics, training, literature reviews.
Representations for FAO
- International Council of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ICMAP); bureau member and steering committee for the IUBS/ICMAP World Congresses on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (Argentina & Thailand; South Africa in 2008)
- US Food and Drugs Administration, safety of botanicals; scientific committee
- World Health Organization (WHO); Good Agriculture and Collection Practices (GACPS) for medicinal plants; publications review committee
- WHO, Safety of herbal medicines; publications review committee
- World Bank, medicinal plants; publications review committee
- WHO/IUCN/WWF/TRAFFIC, Guidelines on the Conservation of Medicinal Plants; publication review committee
- Cane Resources Network for Southern Africa (CARENSA); steering committee
- International Safflower Conferences (Italy, USA and Turkey); International Safflower Germplasm Committee
- ‘Sesame and Safflower Newsletter’; a co-editor and sponsorship
- ‘Crop Breeding and Applied Biotechnology’; a co-editor
- Alternate chair of IPGRI’s Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species
- International Sweet Sorghum Conferences (China); co-organizer
- International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), industrial crops mutation breeding (Germany, USA); scientific committee
- FAO Energy Working Group; member
- UNDPC Drug Control; Agriculture Department representation
- Contact with private industry; Agriculture Department representation
Publications
Modern Coconut Management, Small Holder Oil Palm Manual, Sweet Sorghum Training Manual, Genetic Improvement of Cacao (Portuguese and English), Natural Rubber, Sesame & Safflower journals, Organic Production of Medicinal, Aromatic and Dye Plants, Artemisia annua; the plant, production, processing and medicinal applications, Crop Biotech Bites, many Internet species monographs, many papers.
- Note: Modern Coconut Management won the FAO Agriculture Department Publication Award in the year 2000.
Odila Griffee
Taught economics in the Faculdade de Ciências Políticas e Econômicas do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and has traveled around the world with her husband Peter and her sons Simon and Beto.