Juan Delgado

Research, Innovation and Development Director, LIFE-RID

Delgado is an agronomist from Costa Rica with over 15 years of experience in Citrus management and research. He began his professional career working as an assistant for an Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) consulting group that helped small and medium growers. After a couple of years, he began working directly with the largest Citrus grower in Central America called TicoFrut as the Phytosanitary Supervisor for the Research and Planning Department. He was part of the group that found for the first time HLB in Costa Rica and the Southern region of Nicaragua and helped to build the HLB management program that keeps TicoFrut being the only Citrus company in the world that keeps HLB under 0,5% incidence up to date.

Delgado left TicoFrut and worked with FAO for two years as a consultant diagnosing the HLB condition of México, Central America and the Dominican Republic. During that same time, he got his Masters in Agribusiness from University of Costa Rica and founded and worked for three years in Costa Rica Fruit Company (CRFC), as their Production and Research Manager.

Finally, and until nowadays he has worked as Director of LIFE-RID. LIFE-RID is the Research, Innovation and Development department of AMVAC LATAM, a company that provides solutions for growers in Latin America. He has collaborated with researchers and agronomist in many parts of the world and he has lead research projects that have been presented in the IRCHLB, the Citrus World Congress and many international congresses. He has been an invited professor at EARTH University, ITCR, UCR, UNED and UCF. He is an ad hoc reviewer for CRDF, a member of the Advisory Board of MISA-UCF Center and member of the Global Steering Committee of the IRCHLB.