Christian Thierfelder is a Principal Cropping Systems Agronomist specializing in Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems research with CIMMYT. He is based in Harare, Zimbabwe and covers the whole southern African region. He trained as a Soil Scientist at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany and did his PhD-project with the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) on soil conservation in Cali, Colombia. He received his PhD with the University of Hohenheim, Germany in 2003. Since 2004, he has been involved in a number of CA related projects led by CIMMYT in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Namibia. He has conducted applied and strategic research on-farm and on-station to adapt CA to the needs and environments of smallholder farmers in southern Africa. Since 2009 he has been project leader of several CA projects. He guided the research programs of 30 Bsc, MSc and PhD students, and published more than 60 research articles in peer-reviewed high-impact journals and books.