Dr. Miriam Karwitha Charimbu is Lecturer in the department of Crops, Horticulture and Soils and a Postdoctoral fellow of Alliance for African Partnership fellowship program at Michigan State University, USA. Her research interests are in crop disease diagnostics, biotechnology, impact of climate change on the diversity of plant pathogens, bioprospecting for biological agents for management of crop pests and diseases. Miriam works on evaluation of crop germplasm for resistance to diseases and pests and climate smart crop protection technologies to build resilience to climate change. She works with farmers, farmer groups and extension service providers to manage crop pests in order to reduce losses, enhance food availability and farmer livelihoods. Profile link: https://www.egerton.ac.ke/eprofile/18306

Dr. Maurice E. Oyoo is Senior Lecturer in the department of Crops, Horticulture and Soils, Egerton University, Kenya. Maurice has PhD holder in Advanced Agricultural Technology & Sciences; and MSc. Genetics and Plant Breeding with over ten years of teaching and research experience with wide publications in the field of agricultural sciences. His research interests are in classical and molecular plant breeding (Plant biotechnology). Recently, he is more focus in climate smart agricultural technologies and marker trait association as well as gene expression studies. Maurice once work as a senior Agricultural Extension Officer and later, a Senior Researcher at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). He is a member of Plant Breeders’ Association of Kenya.

Paul Kimurto is a Professor at Depertment of Crops, Horticulture and soil, Faculty of Agriculture, Egerton University and currently the Director of Agroscience Park Innovation Centre. He is a Crop physiologist/Crop Breeding expert by training and has developed several dryland legumes and cereal varieties which have been commercialized by Seed Industry in Kenya and taken by farming communities. Professionally Dryland research and drought stress physiology/Breeding specialist with extensive research in climate mitigation, dryland development and validation of breeding and variety development techniques, Application of molecular breeding techniques, Irrigation, fertility and water use and management and seed systems in ASALs in collarobation with CIMMYT, ICRISAT under several research programs funded by USAID, AGRA, CIMMYT and ICRISAT. Currently KImurto is focused of food safety in groundnuts and application of biovontrol, agents in reducing aflatoxin contamination using Alfasafe and Tricoderma in collaboration with IITA funded by European Union and also climate change, GHG emissions and legume-rice intergration systems in rice production systems. more information can be obatined from link3/17/2025 https://www.egerton.ac.ke/eprofile/18769#, ORCID-https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5806-6614

Dr. Mercy Wamalwa is a Lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences, Egerton University. She is Specialized in Plant Breeding, application and development of new technologies in plant breeding, disease eradication and contributing to increased food production. Mercy has a Ph.D in Plant Breeding which was a sand-witch program between Egerton University, Global Rust Research Centre (GRRC), (Denmark) and the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in the UK under SCPRID grant BB/J012017/1 “Maximizing the potential for sustainable and durable resistance to the wheat yellow rust pathogen” which is part of international research collaboration. Mercy has been involved in various research projects, focusing on Association and diversity study of E.A bread-wheat genotypes. She has also worked on improving wheat and barley for genetic resistance. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8413-7212 Profile link: https://www.egerton.ac.ke/eprofile/19665