Md. Baktear Hossain, PhD joined on 30 December 2020 as Director of the SAARC Agriculture Centre (SAC), a regional organization of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The SAC, the knowledge and information hub in South Asia, is one of the most vibrant regional centre working under the umbrella of SAARC. Since several decades, the SAC is working on human resource development, policy guidelines, project implementation,Germplasms distribution, providing PhD agriculture scholarship, publish book and manual, technology transferring ,SAARC food bank, capacity building; essentially related to agriculture and allied sectors.

Dr. Baktear Hossain started his carrier as scientific officer of Bangladesh Institute of Nuclear Agriculture (BINA) in 1994. Among his other important achievements, Dr. Hossain worked as visiting Scholar of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during 2002-2003 at the Soil & Crop Sciences Department of Texas A&M University, USA. In 2013-2014, heaccomplished his Post-Doctoral research on Arsenic speciation in riceat the Crops & Soil Sciences Department of Cornell University, USA.

Subsequently, he was appointed as Principal Scientific Officer (Soils) under the Natural Resources Management Division of BARC in 2013. He was promoted to Director (Manpower & Training) at BARC in 2019. He worked as a National Project Coordinator (NPC) in a European Union (EU) funded FAO project entitled “Capacity Development for Agriculture Innovation System”. Presently he has been working as Coordinator in KGF-ACIAR funded “Nutrient Management for Diversified Cropping in Bangladesh” (NUMAN) project. He is also working as the NPC of the Bangladesh-FAO-Global Soil Partnership implementing German Government funded “Sustainable soil management” project. Dr. Hossain has also been working as the Principal Investigator of Asian Food and Agriculture Cooperation Initiative (AFACI) funded Soil Atlas Project since 2019.