Kazuo Watanabe

Kazuo N. Watanabe serves as an adjunct professor in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University and works as a research professor at Tsukuba Plant Innovation Research Center (formerly Gene Research Center) & Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan. He is native to Japan, and after his undergraduate study in Japan, he completed a doctoral degree at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988. Afterward, he worked both in South and North America.  In this time, he applied biotechnology approaches to conserve and utilize crop genetic resources at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru, and continued these activities in the US and now in Japan.

Kazuo has been serving as an adjunct professor at Cornell University since 1992. He also had been affiliated with United Nations University and International Plant Genetic Resources Institute as an honorary member until 2015. In Japan, he has worked on multidisciplinary research in genetic resources and biotechnology with a biodiplomacy focus and ELSI associated with S&T Policy. He also has served on a part-time basis at various international organizations for technical consultation on biotechnology, genetic resources, and rural development such with AFDB, FAO and CGIAR centers. He has been working extensively with ASEAN nations in the past decade.

Biotechnology and genetic resources are vital technology and resources for food, health and environment, and Kazuo continues his efforts to promote understanding over S&T significance, compliance, and ELSI over the subjects as his biodiplomacy activity.

Besides the biotechnology regulation that is another half of his lifetime contribution, he has conducted genetic resources research with genebanks and germplasm enhancement, especially on root and tuber crops using exotic and wild germplasm, and he has dossiers at CBD and FAO IT PGR FA as a delegation member at Japanese Government.  He also serves the Japanese and international academic communities by assisting their understanding of genetic resources by using his professional experiences from when establishing several international genebanks such as CNRG of Mexico, genetic resources research, and field expeditions in many developing countries. As a token of his efforts, he received Japan’s first case of IRCC under the Nagoya Protocol from Mexico in 2017 with the support of CNRG, INIFAP, SADER and SEMARNAT as well as many of the partners in Mexico.