Detlef Virchow is head of programming at Plan International Germany in Hamburg. He previously served as the executive secretary of the Global Horticulture Initiative (GlobalHort). He has worked as project coordinator for the Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn and for the BiomassWeb project, also at ZEF Bonn. He holds a doctoral degree in agricultural economics from the Christian-Albrechts University of Kiel in Germany. Virchow has formerly worked as the executive manager of the Food Security Center at the University of Hohenheim in Germany and director for the AVRDC Regional Center for Africa in Tanzania. His interdisciplinary research has included a variety of food security-related topics, including nutrition-sensitive agriculture, African indigenous vegetables and crop diversity.