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Agric & Innovations Editor
A prominent crop expert and chief executive officer of Agri-Biotech, Dr Alexander Ian Robertson has died of cardiac failure.
His daughter, Dr Fiona Robertson told the Herald on Friday that her father died of a sudden heart attack early on Monday last week (August 2) at a private hospital in the capital.
He was 82.
“My father died in the early hours of Monday from a sudden heart attack at Health Point,” she said.
Dr Robertson’s advances in plant breeding of the virus — free sweet potato crop led to spectacular success in increasing sweet potato production in Zimbabwe and this brought him wide acclaim.
Smallholder farmers benefited immensely from virus — free varieties boosting yields and livelihoods for many.
He was a lecturer at the Crop Science Department at the University of Zimbabwe for many years before he retired to conduct independent research and run his business.
His work had a far-reaching impact on the lives of thousands of smallholder farmers and agricultural students he taught at university.
While working and doing research at his company —Agri-Biotech — he found a way of removing the virus that plagues sweet potato crops.
Using a GM — free tissue culture process, he and his team would dissect out tips of the sweet potato bud, which is free from viruses and other micro-organisms and grow the bud tips in test tubes for nine months into a virus-free plant.
They kept sub-culturing the plants to increase numbers.
For years, sweet potato plants had become vulnerable to pests and diseases, especially the sweet potato virus complex (SPVD) leading to poor yields.
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