Board of Directors
Matthew Blair, Co-President
Matthew W. Blair (PhD) is a Plant Breeder and Research Associate Professor at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. He conducts breeding and genetics projects on legumes and dicotyledonous C4 crop plants such as cultivated amaranth.
Paul Galewski, Co-President
Paul J Galewski (PhD) is originally from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. He is currently a research geneticist (post-doc) with the USDA-ARS in Idaho. His first experience with Amaranth (kiwicha) was with indigenous Quecha farmers in the central valleys of Peru.
Walt Sumner, Treasurer
Walton Sumner (MD) is a family physician and health services researcher, currently experimenting with low cost, highly sustainable farming on a small farm in Missouri, USA. Areas of active interest include lodge-resistant amaranth varieties and planting.
David Brenner, Secretary
David Brenner is the Curator of the amaranth germplasm collection at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station in Ames, Iowa, where he manages over 3,000 accessions of amaranth and some other crops. For research, the seeds are distributed free of charge.
Lillian Machivenyika
Lillian Machivenyika serves as the Executive Director for Cluster Agricultural Development Services, a public voluntary organization working to improve smallholder agriculture in rural and peri-urban districts of Zimbabwe.
Elibariki Kisimbo
Elibariki Fanuel Kisimbo is a Community Development expert with a background in Agriculture and Livestock Production with considerabel experience in the growing of amaranth. He serves as a Country Director for Empower Tanzania.
Louis E. Jackai
Louis E. Jackai (PhD) is a research professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, his research interests include: Integrated Pest Management; Host Plant Resistance and Nutritional Ecology, among others.
Rob Myers
Rob Myers is an adjunct faculty member with the Plant Sciences Division at the University of Missouri. Since 2010, he has been Regional Director of Extension Programs, at USDA-NIFA North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.
Svitlana Mykolenko
Svitlana Mykolenko (PhD) is a food scientist from Dnipro, Ukraine. As an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, her research is focused on chemistry of amaranth grain, valorization and modification of amaranth waste and by-products.
Our Purpose
- Contribute and extend knowledge of amaranth forms, characteristics and cultures so as to enlarge and preserve the previously diverse gene pool of this family of plants for current people, animals and prosperity.
- Better lives through the exploration and dispensing of amaranth as the highly nutritious, hearty staple for the world’s people.
- Foster communication among and between people and agencies interested in amaranth, its uses, its past and its future.
- Consider and deal with issues such as the importation, brokerage, storage, processing and distribution of amaranth and amaranth products.
- Secure cooperative action in advancing the common purpose of its members.
- Foster equality in business uses.
- Promote activities aimed at enabling the amaranth industry to conduct itself with the greatest efficiency and economy.
- Give consideration and expression to questions affecting the amaranth industry as related to production, financial, commercial and industrial interest of amaranth development.
- Cooperate with other industries, organizations, governmental agencies and universities with regards to their work with amaranth.