Dr Gert Kema is Professor of Tropical Plant Pathology at the Laboratory for Phytopathology of Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. He leads several international banana research programs, including interdisciplinary research projects and public-private-partnerships focusing on Panama disease and black Sigatoka. He is a cofounder of several spin-off companies focusing on banana improvement, disease management and bioprocessing. Dr André Drenth is Professor in Tropical Plant Pathology and Theme Leader for crop protection in the Centre for Horticultural Science at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI), at the University of Queensland. He leads several projects on tropical plant diseases and he initiated and led a national Banana Plant Protection Programme set up to protect Australia’s banana industry from the impact of a range of pests and diseases. Dr Mike Smith has 43 years of research experience with tropical/subtropical fruit and root crops. His laboratory has had great success over the years, including the establishment of one of the world’s major in vitro collections of Musa germplasm and, concomitantly, the introduction, multiplication, distribution and evaluation of new, disease-resistant banana varieties from breeding programs around the world. Dr Gert Kema is Professor of Tropical Plant Pathology at the Laboratory for Phytopathology of Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands. He leads several international banana research programs, including interdisciplinary research projects and public-private-partnerships focusing on Panama disease and black Sigatoka. He is a cofounder of several spin-off companies focusing on banana improvement, disease management and bioprocessing. Dr Hans de Jong is Emeritus professor of plant cytogenetics at Wageningen University, Laboratory of Genetics, Wageningen, the Netherlands. His research focus is on the structure and behaviour of plant chromosomes in relation to gamete sterility and unbalanced chromosomes segregation. Dr Valentin Guignon is a Bioinformatics Specialist at Bioversity International. He works closely with the GreenPhyl database and is also involved in the Musa Germplasm Information System (MGIS), Banana Genome Hub (BGH), Tripal Project and the Breeding API. Valentin has mainly worked on the Banana and Cocoa genomes and participated to their sequencing. Bart Panis obtained his PhD in 1995 at the University Leuven, Belgium, where he was involved in cryopreservation and the development of embryogenic cell suspensions, protoplast culture and techniques for genetic engineering of banana. As Postdoctoral Researcher and later on as Research Manager, he co-ordinated different international projects dealing with plant biotechnology and cryopreservation. In 2013, he started working for Bioversity International and developed the world’s largest banana cryobank. Dr Panis is currently member of the editorial board of CryoLetters and Associate Editor of Plant Cell Tissue and Organ Culture. Dr Sebastien Carpentier is a bioscience engineer, specialized in cell and gene biotechnology and agriculture. He joined Bioversity International in October 2017. He is leading the banana characterization and evaluation team of the Alliance between Bioversity International and CIAT. His team focuses on phenotyping the biodiversity of crops by integrating abiotic stress physiology with omics technology. Sebastien is working in the Leuven office hosted by KULeuven. KULeuven hosts the Bioversity International collection of the tropical crop banana (Musa).
