Sylvester O. Oikeh has more than 18 years of interdisciplinary experience in research and development projects on natural resources and crop management, and plant nutrition. He joined AATF from the Africa Rice Centre, WARDA, where he worked for five years, rising to the position of a Principal Scientist/Soil Fertility Agronomist and Project Leader. As a Principal Scientist, Sylvester’s key duties included conducting strategic and applied research on integrated soil fertility management and plant nutrition to improve natural resources management and increase rice production in smallholder farming systems. He took part in multi-country donor-funded projects, backstopping national research systems scientists in west and eastern Africa, and supervising doctoral students, among other duties.  Between 1990 and 2003, Sylvester held various positions at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), including as a GTZ Research Fellow, a consultant agronomist, and a visiting maize scientist involved in collaborative research investigating micronutrient enhancement of tropical maize. In 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s USDA Plant, Soil and Nutrition Lab at Ithaca, New York, USA. Sylvester attained his doctorate in Soil Science specialising in Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition from the Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria, in 1996. He obtained a Masters degree in Crop Science from the University of Nigeria, Nssuka, the same university from where he had graduated with a Bachelor of Agriculture degree in Horticulture. Sylvester holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Irrigation Engineering from the Centre for Irrigation Engineering of the Katholieke universiteit, Leuven, Belgium. Besides research, he has lectured in Nigeria at the University of Benin (Soil Science) and Anambra State College of Education (Crop Production, Horticulture and Agricultural Economics). Sylvester is a national of Nigeria.