LOCAL ORGANISING COMMITTEE

Nick Rāhiri Roskruge (Ātiawa, Ngāti Tama-ariki) is a retired Professor in Ethnobotany and Horticulture and a research fellow with Ngā Pae o Maramatanga (the National Māori Research Centre) and Chairman of the Data Repository committee for Genomics Aotearoa a Centre of Research Excellence  based at Otago University in NZ. 

Nick is from Taranaki in the North Island of New Zealand and continues to be involved in ongoing Māori development activities and tribal interests there. In 2013 he was awarded a Fulbright award and spent time at Cornell University (New York) and a number of other US state universities around ethnobotany and potato genomic programmes. 

Currently he is also a member and chairman of the Indigenous and Local Knowledge Taskforce for IPBES based in Paris, France.

Nick is involved in a wide range of Māori and Pacific horticultural projects and is the Chairman of Tahuri Whenua (National Māori Horticultural Collective).  His professional activities centre around farmer training, food security and crop systems aligned to New Zealand, the South Pacific nations especially Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Samoa and the Americas, particularly Chile and Peru.