Dr Mauricio Diazgranados Cadelo

I am a Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (London, UK). I lead Kew's Nature-based Solutions Initiative, aiming to provide solutions to address environmental and societal challenges (such as climate change, poverty, food security, health, and biodiversity loss) for the benefit of both society and nature.

My research develops plant & fungal diversity approaches to support communities in locations and economies where nutritional, income and biodiversity issues are of paramount importance. My projects focus on studying utilized, neglected and under-utilized plants, their main threats and conservation status, and their sustainable use, primarily in the Tropics.

I am also interested in how climate change is affecting these plants and the related ecosystem services. I use an interdisciplinary approach, integrating biodiversity, economic botany, ethnobotany, systematics, macroevolution, biogeography, restoration, and conservation biology. 

I am the head of the Kew-Colombia Bio programme (2016-ongoing), which aims to support the sustainable development of Colombia’s biodiversity resources, involving a robust scientific program in partnership with various local organizations. We have carried out 15 projects (£7,5M) so far, including creating online portals (http://colplanta.org/; http://colfungi.org/) with information for all the species of plants and fungi known to Colombia.

Also, I am part of the team carrying out the NERC-project “How do the Páramos store water? The role of plants and people” (PARAGUAS), and I am the PI of the project “Useful Plants & Fungi of Colombia” (https://in-colombia.org/; £3M; 2019-2022; 119 researchers involved). As part of this project, I am now releasing the Catalogue of Useful Plants of Colombia and the Catalogue of Fungi of Colombia, covering 36,087 species in 1,570 pages, and 28 chapters from 75 experts worldwide. Also, I created a Value Chain Network portal (https://redin-colombia.org/), which is boosting sustainable bioeconomy in this country.

• BSc, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 1999
• MA, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2005
• PhD, Saint Louis University, 2012