Dr Tadele Tefara
| Position: | Coordinator Region V: East Africa |
| Location: | ICIPE – ILRI Campus, Gurd Shola |
Education:
Tadele obtained his PhD in Agricultural Entomology in 2004 from Stellenbosch University, South Africa; MSc in Crop Protection in 1998 and BSc in Plant Sciences in 1993 both from Haramaya University, Ethiopia. Tadele was post-doc fellow of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at University of Göttingen, Germany, from 2008-2009.
Expertise
His expertise covers, screening and breeding for insect resistance, evaluation of genetically modified crops for insect resistance, biosafety and stewardship of GM crops, biological control, biopesticides, host-insect-endophytic fungi interactions, pest management in multiple cropping system, and integrated postharvest pest management.
Work experiences:
Tadele widely worked with international organizations and national agricultural research and extension systems in Eastern and Southern Africa countries. Presently, Tadele is Country Head for icipe (International Center of Insect Physiology & Ecology) Ethiopia Office. He provides leadership to staff on site as well as gives oversight to icipe’s portfolio of research conducted in Ethiopia which includes IPM, modern beekeeping, silkworm farming, and integrated vectors management mainly mosquitoes and tsetse flies.
His current research focuses on developing IPM packages for cereal and legume crops; he presently leads the rice, maize and chickpea IPM for East Africa project supported by the USAID Feed the Future through the IPM Innovation Lab. Prior to joining icipe, Tadele served as a regional project leader and senior entomologist at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, based in Nairobi, from June 2009 to July 2015; his research mainly focused on developing stem borers and postharvest insect pest resistant maize hybrids and inbred lines, developing effective technology for integrated postharvest pest management. Along with CIMMYT breeders he actively contributed to the development and release of six insect resistant maize hybrids and two inbred lines.
He also worked on genetically modified Bt maize against maize stem borers under biosafety lab and confined field trails in Kenya and Uganda, assessed the effect of Bt maize on non-target arthropods, contributed in designing insect resistance management strategy for Bt maize under small holder farming. Tadele led a team of diverse expertise including economists, entomologists, communication expert, gender expert, postharvest technologist and agronomist in implementing postharvest pest management project in seven countries in Africa from 2010-2015.
Tadele started his career at Haramaya University as assistant lecturer and thereafter senior lecturer, assistant professor and associate professor of entomology; he also served as Director of Research and Extension at the same University. He supervised 2 post-docs, 5 PhD students and 22 MSc students in different fields of entomology. He has published 1 book, 3 book chapters, 2 training manuals, over 60 papers in referred journals, and has one patent right from his research findings.
