Zaki Afshar, Former CIMMYT Trainee

Zaki Afshar is a plant breeding and genetics Master student studying at Colorado State University. In 2019, Afshar won the National Association of Plant Breeder Borlaug Scholarship, making him one of the six graduate student recipients in the United States.

Afshar sees his experience as a CIMMYT trainee (Basic Wheat Improvement Course, BWIC, 2015) as a pivotal step in defining his career path. Upon completion of the course, he left with a love for plant breeding.

Afshar says that before the BWIC “I had an idea of plant breeding, but even at the CIMMYT station in Afghanistan we were not doing basic research like crossing lines or creating new populations. That was all done in Mexico. CIMMYT Mexico was sending us trials – we were basically doing adaptive trials. We then collected data on which ones were higher yielding in specific regions. That alone was enough to learn a bit, but the BWIC allowed me to dive into plant breeding a lot more.”

Ask him today, and Afshar will tell you that the CIMMYT training he received has given him a solid foundation to follow his passion for plant breeding.

"I wish I took this training right after my undergraduate degree,” said Afshar, “When I was in my undergraduate degree in Afghanistan, we did not have a lot of infrastructure and well-established research systems. I didn’t get to implement everything in the field.” Afshar continued, “You don’t easily become interested in something you only read in textbooks, but when you see people working with others and sharing essential information with each other, that makes you treasure the feeling of sharing your learning experience.”

Afshar became part of CIMMYT a few years before he was a trainee. In 2013, Afshar began at CIMMYT Afghanistan as an employee. “I was doing technical and administrative work such as liaising with the Ministry of Agriculture, taking care of project meetings, and sending out trainees from Afghanistan to Mexico.” Afshar said, “Arranging all those factors and moving parts was a lot. I took care of appointments, directions for trainees, visas, transportation, and more.”

Afshar says that his involvement in different realms of agriculture gave him the opportunity to learn and mature while maintaining a love with science.

"My father has a farm with 15 irrigated acres of farmland in the Baghlan Province of Afghanistan, where I was born,” started Afshar, “he was growing wheat and rice in his field, and when I was a kid I would go out in the field to bring water and tea to my father and the workers. Back then and even now, most farmers are using very basic methods of farming.”

Afshar said this firsthand experience on his family farm in Afghanistan is what set him on the path of becoming a plant breeder and geneticist. 

“You don’t easily become interested in something you only read in textbooks, but when you see people working with others and sharing essential information with each other, that makes you treasure the feeling of sharing your learning experience.” - Zaki Afshar

By Linc Thomas