Melaku was born in 1936,[1] in Shewa, Ethiopia, to Qeñazmach Worede Gebrekidan, an Ethiopian Shewan governor, army commander and aristocrat from Bulga, and Woizero Amsale Wodajeneh, an Ethiopian noblewoman from Shewa and the daughter of Fitawrari Wodajeneh Awgechaw, who was an army commander and viceroy of Ras Lul Seged in Ethiopia's former Solomonic dynasty Kingdom.
[2] After completing his PhD, he returned to Ethiopia and became involved in the planning of the Plant Genetic Resources Centre in Addis Ababa, of which he became Director in 1979.
He held this post until his retirement in 1993 to join the Seeds of Survival Programme of Ethiopia, which he founded with the support of a consortium of Canadian NGOs led by the Unitarian Service Committee (USC/Canada).
Melaku retired from government service to continue and develop his pioneer work on a farming-based native seed (landrace) conservation, enhancement and utilisation.
Growing without commercial fertilisers or other chemicals, the locally adapted native seeds developed in this way (e.g. durum wheat) have been shown to exceed their high-input counterparts on average by 10-15% and the original farmers' cultivars by 20-25% in yield.