Horticulture (Seeds and Orchards)
Greg Cullen has over 40 years of experience in the horticulture industry with an emphasis on seeds, planting materials and orchard development. He gained a BSc. in Horticulture from the University of Reading, an MBA from the Cranfield Institute of Technology (now Cranfield University). Mr. Cullen has worked in SE and S Asia, in Africa, and in Eastern Europe.Mr. Cullen’s career began in commercial agriculture first in the UK, then in Iran (where he had earlier been a volunteer working on adaptive research in grapes, citrus, deciduous fruits and vegetable). He moved to another commercial venture in Kenya where he set up an enterprise to produce vegetable seed for home sales and export. He spent the next ten years based in the UK working for a leading Dutch based multinational seed company (now part of Syngenta) on all aspects of marketing including product development in vegetable and flower seeds. The work included undertaking value chain development of fruits and vegetables into UK from various European, African and other sources, using the S&G seeds. Greg completed his commercial career as a financial analyst for Zaadunie (Sandoz, now part of Syngenta).
He returned to East Africa for an African Development Bank project and worked on seed development and marketing in Uganda, mainly with maize seeds. From 2000 he undertook various donor-funded seed development projects in Cambodia, Pakistan, Nepal and Kosovo. However since 2003 Mr. Cullen’s work has largely been in Afghanistan where he has been instrumental in guiding the country in the development of its horticulture sector, especially in orchard and nursery industry development.
In particular he led implementation of the Perennial Horticulture Development Project (from 2006-10), a wide ranging national project that includes fruit and nut tree national germplasm collection and evaluation, variety development, training/extension; development of improved fruit and nut tree nursery grower industry; development of export-oriented horticulture industry through NGO implementing partners and the formation of nursery grower associations. He prepared technical sections for EC calls for tenders from NGOs, monitored NGO technical performance (9 NGOs with sub-projects). He remained an advisor to the project until April 2012.
