Mahmoud Solh

Mahmoud Solh was a Lebanese agricultural scientist who served as Director General of the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, ICARDA, from 2006 to 2016, guiding the CGIAR center through a period that included its relocation out of Syria amid that country's civil war. He began his career with ICARDA's predecessor, the Ford Foundation's Arid Land Agricultural Development Program, in the early 1970s, working as a lentil breeder from 1978 before becoming regional food legume scientist for North Africa in 1986 and regional coordinator for the Nile Valley and Red Sea Program in 1990, and he also spent four years as director of the Plant Production and Protection Division at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization before returning to ICARDA as its director general. Under his leadership ICARDA released hundreds of improved crop varieties that continued to benefit smallholder farmers across the Middle East, Africa, and Central and South Asia; he died in November 2025.