Bela "Bert" Grof


Bela "Bert" Grof was a Hungarian-born Australian agricultural researcher with contributions to grassland and forage research in the tropics.

Education and early professional life

Grof was born in Győr, Hungary to Bela Grof and Maria née Gunde.
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.

Professional life

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 and the Cerrados of Brazil, working for the International Center of Tropical Agriculture, one of the research centers under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. 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 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.
He was an author of numerous scientific articles and book chapters, including several articles together with his CIAT colleague Derrick Thomas. As a pasture and forage researcher, Grof identified a large number of commercial grass and legume cultivars that enormously contributed to the improvement of tropical pastures, particularly in Australia and South America.

Forage/pasture cultivars

The following forage/pasture cultivars were commercialized and/or released based on Bert Grof's germplasm collection and research results.
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.
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.