The University of Abuja will hold its 51st Inaugural Lecture on Thursday, 25 June 2026, with a Professor of Agronomy set to deliver a lecture addressing one of Nigeria's most pressing agricultural challenges at the intersection of climate change and food production.

Professor Bashir Omolaran Bello of the Department of Agronomy will deliver the lecture, titled "Plant Breeding for Climate Resilience and Food Security," at the Faculty of Agriculture Lecture Theatre on the institution's Main Campus along Airport Road, Abuja. The event is scheduled to begin at 2pm and is open to the general public.

Professor Bello is a specialist in Plant Breeding and Genetics whose body of work, spanning decades of field and laboratory research, has accumulated more than 1,700 scholarly citations globally. His research focus covers the genetic improvement of tropical crops, with particular attention to drought tolerance, nutritional biofortification, and yield stability under stress conditions in Sub Saharan Africa.

Among his documented research contributions is a study assessing genetic relationships among grain yield, tryptophan, and carotenoid content in early Naturing Provitamin A Quality Protein Maize varieties evaluated under rainfed conditions in Nigeria. That work, targeting the twin problems of malnutrition and declining crop productivity in West and Central Africa, exemplifies the applied thrust his 51st Inaugural Lecture is expected to develop further.

The subject of his lecture sits at the centre of a challenge with significant national implications. Nigeria's agricultural sector faces compounding pressure from erratic rainfall, prolonged drought cycles, and post harvest losses that consistently undermine food availability, particularly in the country's Guinea savanna belt where staple crop production is most vulnerable to climate variability.

Plant breeding, as a scientific discipline, offers one of the more durable long term responses to these pressures, enabling the development of crop varieties that can sustain yields under heat, drought, and shifting seasonal patterns without dependence on costly inputs beyond the reach of smallholder farmers.

The University of Abuja, a Federal Institution established in 1988, holds the inaugural lecture series as part of its tradition of formally presenting professorial scholarship to the wider academic community and the public.