Bela "Bert" Grof

Bela "Bert" Grof AM (9 June 1921 – 17 November 2011) 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.

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.^[1]

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 (i.e. Eastern Plains) (1978–1985) and the Cerrados of Brazil (1985–1992), working for the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), one of the research centers under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). 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.^[2] In 1994, he returned to Brazil where he continued to work especially on Stylosanthes improvement until 1997, when he returned to Australia.^[3]

As a forage agronomist formed in the "Australian school", Grof initiated tropical legume plant breeding (selecting in hybrid Centrosema progenies) 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.^[4]

He was an author of numerous scientific articles and book chapters, including several articles together with his CIAT colleague Derrick Thomas (see publication list below). 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.^[5]

• Brachiaria decumbens cv. Basilisk - signal grass; now sown on tens of millions of hectares, particularly in Brazil;^[6]
• Stylosanthes guianensis cv. Cook and cv. Endeavour - stylo;^[7]
• Desmodium heterophyllum cv. Johnstone - hetero;^[8]
• Centrosema pubescens cv. Belalto - centro;^[9]
• Brachiaria ruziziensis cv. Kennedy - ruzi grass;
• Panicum maximum cv. Makueni - guinea grass;
• Stylosanthes guianensis cv. Ubon;^[10]
• Stylosanthes capitata + S.macrocephala cv. Campo Grande;^[11]
• Stylosanthes guianensis BRS Grof 1463 + S.guianensis BRS Grof 1480 cv. Bela;^[12][13][14]

Honors and awards

In 2001, Bert Grof was made Fellow of the Tropical Grassland Society of Australia Inc.^[15]

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.^[16]