Grassini received a bachelor’s in science in agricultural engineering from the University of Buenos Aires and a Ph.D. in agronomy from UNL. Grassini has authored 25 papers published in peer-review journals, including Nature Communications, PNAS, Global Change Biology, six book chapters and many extension publications. His research interests center on crop yield potential, yield-gap analysis, resource- and energy-use efficiency in cropping systems and simulation modeling. Grassini’s past research has encompassed a diverse range of cropping systems, including rainfed crops in Argentina and Sub-Saharan Africa and high-yield irrigated crops in the United States corn belt.
One of Grassini’s major on-going projects is to develop a global yield gap atlas that provides estimates of gaps between actual and potential yield for major cropping systems. He is also leading a project to benchmark on-farm yields and input-use efficiency maize-soybean systems in the U.S. corn belt and another project on yield forecasting. Grassini was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, Fling Fellowship and two other fellowships. He is also an appointed member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Field Crops Research journal.