My friend George Ayad passed away a couple of days ago. When I first started out at IBPGR, as it then was, he was the guy I would go to for advice, both technical and personal. I followed in his footstep, or tried to, when I was posted to Nicosia in 1987 to take over from him the office he had set up there to cover the Middle East and North Africa, helping inchoate genebanks get off the ground. I owe him a lot, maybe everything. And I’m not the only one.