Dear Members,
It is with a heavy heart I bring the news of the passing of friend, mentor and wild Musa expert Markku Hakkinen. He passed away on December 5. I was just starting to help him to finish and publish his monograph of wild Musa. May he rest in peace.
Though only an occasionally active board member here, he was the world's foremost expert on wild Musa and single handedly contributed more to the documentation of wild bananas than probably anyone else in history.
Pasted below is a summary of some of his accomplishments from the MusaNet group:
"Markku, a Finnish national and former sea captain, embarked on his second career as a botanist in the 1970s, and spent the last three decades travelling in search of wild Musa species throughout Asia.
46 out of the 70 known wild species of Musa were described by Markku, three of which were named after him: Musa haekkinenii, Musa markkui and Musa velutina subsp. markuana. He also authored more than 80 international scientific articles on the subject.
His dedication and outstanding contribution to the understanding of Musa diversity will long be remembered. His achievements were recognized in 2009, when he received the HH Bloomer award from the Linnean Society of London to an amateur naturalist, and in 2015, when he received a Significant Cultural Act Award from the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Markku was part of the Taxonomic Advisory Group of the Diversity Thematic Group of MusaNet, through which he donated time to the field verification of ITC accessions for many years and participated in knowledge sharing, including the meeting on Effective Use of Genetic Diversity for Banana Breeding that was held in Bogor, Indonesia in 2012.
Markku was not only remarkable for his scientific work but also for his friendship and personality who never hesitated to help young scientists not only in Asia but also around the world."
Markku and I, 2011.