Oscar Riera-Lizarazu

Professional Summary

Oscar Riera-Lizarazu, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX, USA. Dr. Riera-Lizarazu works on rose genetics and breeding with the goal of developing, testing, and releasing improved varieties of roses with regional and national adaptation as well as conducting research on the use of genomics-based tools for rose variety development and understanding the genetic basis of traits in Rosa and related horticultural crops.

Riera-Lizarazu has more than 20 years of national and international research experience on plant genetics, cytogenetics, and breeding. Prior to his assignment at Texas A&M, Riera-Lizarazu held various senior-level positions in the private sector such as Global Wheat and Sorghum Breeding Leader at Dow AgroSciences and the North America (NA) Regional Crops’ Technology Leader at Corteva Agriscience, the Agricultural Division of DowDuPont. Prior to working in the private sector, Riera-Lizarazu served internationally in director-level positions at the Int. Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in India and as a tenured faculty in Department of Crop and Soil Science at Oregon State University, USA. Riera-Lizarazu has also held research scientist positions at the International Wheat and Maize Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico and the Bolivian Institute of Agricultural Technology (IBTA), Bolivia.

Riera-Lizarazu received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Plant Science from the Utah State University and a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Minnesota, USA.