The Driving Force at Ag RD&IP Consult
Jorge Mayer, Director at Ag RD&IP Consult P/L and biotique P/L, brings to the table a long track record in agricultural research, R&D and IP management, and international technology transfer.
Jorge brings extensive experience in plant genetics, intellectual property law and commercialisation in the field of agricultural R&D. He is a world expert with over 40 years of experience in plant genetics, traits and the management of associated intellectual property rights. He has a PhD in Chemistry & Biochemistry from the University of Innsbruck, Austria, and a Master of Industrial Property Law from the University of Technology Sydney, Australia (UTS).
Jorge was born and grew up in Peru and has lived and worked in Austria, Germany, Colombia, and Australia, covering a wide range of agricultural R&D projects of global resonance. He is well placed to apply his experiences to assist others achieve impact in sustainable agriculture.
After obtaining a PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the University of Innsbruck-Austria, he conducted research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, with the group of Jeff Schell, bearing witness of some of the first transgenic plants being generated in the world and participating in efforts to understand the underlying mechanisms.
After three years as an assistant professor at the Botanic Institute of the RWTH Aachen, Germany, searching for rust resistance genes in wheat, he joined the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), in Cali-Colombia, where he worked as a senior staff of the Biotechnology Research Unit, providing molecular biochemical support to the pathology, physiology, entomology and microbiology sections of the cassava, beans, and pastures research programs.
He went on to lead the Molecular Biochemistry section of AgroBiologicals research and production at AgrEvo (now Bayer Crop Science) in Bogota, Colombia, where he worked on the molecular characterisation of entomopathogenic fungi used for the biological control of coffee berry borer and whiteflies.
In 1998 he joined the "Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture" (CAMBIA), in Canberra, Australia, as a Principal Scientist, IP Analyst and Operations Manager. Part of his research was dedicated to finding beta-glucuronidases with novel enzymatic properties from various sources.
At this stage and due to his involvement with freedom-to-operate analysis and technology transfer, Jorge obtained a Master of Industrial Property degree at the Law Faculty of the University of Technology, Sydney.
In 2004, Jorge became Manager of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Project, based in Freiburg-Germany, where he also managed the international ProVitaMinRice Consortium, a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded project aimed at increasing the biofortification properties of Golden Rice.
From 2008 to 2015, Jorge worked sequentially as the Program Manager for Germplasm Enhancement, Yield and Quality Traits, and finally Yield Traits at the Grains Research & Development Corporation of Australia (GRDC), until finally becoming an independent consultant for international agricultural R&D and technology transfer.