Martina Castellion

Martina leads and provides strategic direction to the Seed Health and Logistics Unit, including operational excellence, innovation in seed diagnostic testing and phytosanitation, and outreach to partners, regulators and customers. The Seed Health and Logistics Unit  facilitates the exchange of seed and other biological materials within IRRI and with IRRI partners and  other stakeholders globally, promoting process efficiency while ensuring compliance with national and international regulations.

She ensures the Institute's compliance with national legal and regulatory framework and international agreements related, but not limited, to plant quarantine, seed quality, biosafety,  intellectual property rights, access and benefit sharing of genetic resources, and transboundary movement of living modified organisms. Martina is a scientific member and chairperson of the IRRI Institute Biosafety Committees (IBC) for the Department of Science and Technology-BC and Department of Agriculture-BC in the Philippines.

Martina was formerly a research fellow of the national council of research and technology (CONICET) and at the Germplasm bank, Institute of Biological Resources at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (IRB-INTA) and research fellow and teaching assistant in plant development and embryology at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. She then moved to the private sector and held roles of Biological Material Movement Coordinator and Biosafety lead for LATAM at seed, biotechnology, and crop protection top multinational companies, and specialized in transboundary movement of biological materials and seed and LMO regulatory affairs.

Martina holds a Bachelor degree in Biology specialized in plant systematics, morphology, and physiology  and a Doctorate in Seed Conservation from the University of Buenos Aires.