Howarth Bouis

Howarth Bouis is the founder of the HarvestPlus program, which is coordinated by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). HarvestPlus is dedicated to promoting nutrition, health, and livelihoods by enriching staple food crops with micronutrients, a process known as biofortification. Bouis pioneered this concept in the early 1990s and has devoted his career to turning this idea into a global movement that currently reaches more than 15 million smallholder farming families in low-income countries. As director of HarvestPlus, Bouis coordinates an interdisciplinary, global effort to breed and disseminate micronutrient-rich staple food crops to reduce hidden hunger among malnourished populations. Since 1993, he has sought to promote biofortification within the CGIAR consortium, among national agricultural research centers, and in the international agriculture and nutrition communities. Dr. Bouis was awarded the World Food Prize in 2016, along with Drs. Jan Low, Maria Andrade and Robert Mwanga of the International Potato Center.