Mareme Niang Belko is an agronomist and gender specialist at the Institut Sénégalais de Recherches Agricoles (ISRA) in Senegal. Mareme co-leads Crop Innovation in West Africa, helping breeders connect with the center’s gender team to ensure that their activities are gender sensitive while taking into account themes of resilience and nutrition that will benefit much women and youth. She is a graduate of the African Plant Breeding Academy (AfPBA) Class V.

Marème’s current research activities focus on “Crop Improvement under Sahelian conditions.” Her team characterizes sesame production systems (TPE) in order to provide management options to farmers to both adapt to and mitigate climate change, and also identify the mechanisms of sesame adaptation to drought and use the knowledge generated in breeding and processing technologies.