Draft:Rainer Schultze-Kraft

Rainer Schultze-Kraft (8 November 1941 in Freiburg im Breisgau – 16 February 2024 in Freiburg im Breisgau) was a German agricultural scientist. He was particularly committed to the preservation and sustainable use of genetic resources of forage plants in the tropics and subtropics.

Education and professional life
After graduating from high school in Heidelberg in 1960, Schultze-Kraft worked for six years on the Hacienda Buritaca near Santa Marta in Colombia. From 1967 to 1972 he studied Agricultural Science with specialization in tropical agriculture at Justus Liebig University Giessen. He received his doctorate (PhD) at the same university in 1976 with a topic on the suitability of species and ecotypes of the legume genus Stylosanthes (Dalbergieae) for pasture improvement in tropical savannas of South America, by the example of the Colombian Llanos Orientales, supervised by the German plant scientist Jochen Alkämper. During his doctoral research, from 1973 onwards, he worked at the international agricultural research institute International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Palmira, Colombia, first as a Visiting Research Associate, guided by the Australian agronomist Bela "Bert" Grof. From 1976, he headed the Forage Germplasm Section of CIAT's Tropical Pastures Program as a senior scientist. From 1991 to 2007, Schultze-Kraft was a full professor for grassland and pasture sciences] in the tropics and subtropics at the Institute for Plant Production and Agroecology in the Tropics and Subtropics at University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart. After retiring in 2007, he lived alternately in Ginebra, Valle del Cauca, Colombia and the Black Forest. He was married to the Colombian María Cecilia Tascón, with whom he had two sons and a daughter. Rainer Schultze-Kraft was the younger brother of the translator and editor of Latin American literature Peter Schultze-Kraft (*1937).

Achievements
Schultze-Kraft's main scientific interest was the identification of forage legumes that were digestible by and acceptable to livestock, adapted to typical, very acidic soils of the tropics and subtropics. Since there was a lack of such plant species in international and national genebanks, Schultze-Kraft undertook almost 40 collecting trips to South and Central America, Mexico, Southeast Asia and Africa, where he collected seeds of potential forage plants together with local scientists. He was particularly interested in the legume genera Stylosanthes, Desmodium and Centrosema, and later also in forage shrubs of species in the genera Cratylia and Flemingia as well as Desmodium and Desmodium-related species. After their introduction to Colombia, the collected accessions underwent a standard characterization and evaluation scheme. Most of the over 20,000 accessions collected by Schultze-Kraft are still stored in CIAT's genebank. During the evaluation of large collections of potential forage legumes, previously botanically undescribed plant types or even new plant species were often discovered, which Schultze-Kraft published in collaboration with various plant systematics specialists. Even after retirement, he continued to work on this.

Rainer Schultze-Kraft also distinguished himself by
 * The re-foundation of the scientific journal Tropical Grasslands-Forrajes Tropicales (open-access online), first published by CIAT and now by the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), also as editor in chief together with his Australian colleague Lyle Winks.
 * Description of several new plant species in the genera Centrosema and Stylosanthes, as well as taxonomic revisions of these genera.
 * About 300 scientific publications together with colleagues and supervised students.
 * Together with his brother Peter Schultze-Kraft, literary translations from Spanish to German, including some works by Tomás González and Pedro Badrán.

Honors and awards

 * 1997 Fellow of the Tropical Grassland Society of Australia
 * 2009 CIAT Emeritus Status
 * 2016 Friendship Award by the Chinese Government
 * 2022 International Science and Technology Cooperation Award of the Chinese Province Hainan