Bela “Bert” Grof

He was made a Member of the Order of Australia for services to primary industry through research and the development of sustainable tropical pasture technology to increase food production, rural incomes, and scientific knowledge in Asia, Central and Southern America, and Australia, was granted to Bert Grof in 2006.

In 2001, Bert Grof was made Fellow of the Tropical Grassland Society of Australia Inc. for his great contribution to our understanding of exotic species ecology, and helping to improve the incomes and lifestyles of innumerable families around the tropical world by plant introduction for tropical pasture improvement.

Bert Grof spent large time of his researcher life in South America, dedicated to pasture and forage improvement. He excelled in evaluating the ecological adaptation of large collections of grass and legume forages to low fertility soils in the Colombian Llanos (i.e. Eastern Plains) (1978–1985) and the Cerrados of Brazil (1985–1992), working for the International Center of Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), one of the research centers under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). After leaving Brazil in 1992, Grof moved to the Philippines to open a CIAT forages office for Asia and to initiate systematic evaluation of a large set of forage germplasm in South East Asia. In 1994, he returned to Brazil where he continued to work especially on Stylosanthes improvement until 1997, when he returned to Australia.

As a forage agronomist formed in the “Australian school”, Grof initiated tropical legume plant breeding (selecting in hybrid Centrosema progenies) at CIAT as early as 1972 when he arrived in Colombia. He was involved in subsequent CIAT breeding programs in the legumes Stylosanthes capitata and S. guianensis during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.

Bert Grof graduated in Agricultural Science from the Hungarian Royal University of Sciences, going on to obtain his Doctorate in Economic Botany at the same institution. After migrating 1949 to Australia, he joined the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Stock in 1950. During the 1950s and 1960s, Grof was also involved in forage species collecting missions in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South and Central America.

Bela “Bert” Grof AM (9 June 1921 –17 November 2011) was a Hungarian-born Australian agricultural researcher with contributions to grassland and forage research in the tropics.