Sarada Krishnan
Director of Programs
- Nationality: USA
- Language spoken: English, Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi
- Favourite Crop: Coffee
Sarada Krishnan is responsible for providing oversight on the implementation of strategic projects and programs designed to support the Crop Trust mandate of securing the world’s crop diversity. She supervises a team of scientists and project managers overseeing the planning, development, and implementation of the overall programmatic technical framework of the organization.
Sarada has an undergraduate degree in Horticulture from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India, master’s degree in Horticulture from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, USA and PhD in Conservation Biology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA.
Before joining the Crop Trust, she served as the Director of Horticulture and Center for Global Initiatives at Denver Botanic Gardens for 16 years. She has participated in several field research projects in coffee and was one of the scientists involved in developing the Global Conservation Strategy for Coffee Genetic Resources.
Her broad interests include in situ and ex situ conservation and use of crop genetic resources, coffee genetic resources, biodiversity conservation, agroforestry, food and nutrition security, empowerment of women and small-holder farmers.