pardesi

Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, died over the weekend. I had the great fortune of meeting him in Africa three years ago, when he was speaking to a gathering of young African crop breeders. At over 90 years of age, he was articulate, almost effervescent with hope, and full of confidence in the youth and in scientific endeavor being able to achieve great things. He talked to me a little bit about how difficult it was to get acceptance of his high yielding wheat lines in India, and how Swaminathan was the one who helped push things forward. I feel fortunate to have met and talked with this great man. RIP.

Norman Borlaug, R.I.P.
14 September 2009

Norman Borlaug, who has just died at age 95 in Dallas, was an exception among living Nobel Peace Prize beneficiaries: he actually deserved the award, which he received in 1970. This media-shy and extremely modest scientist, who served on the faculty at Texas A&M University, saved from hunger hundreds of millions of starving peasants around the world. Well known in Mexico and India as the Father of the Green Revolution, he never accepted this pompous title. He defined himself instead as a skillful plant breeder whose career had been defined by a tough childhood on an Iowa farm, where he first wondered why plants grew better in some places than others. When the Rockefeller Foundation began fighting hunger in Mexico in the 1950s, Borlaug joined the team. He took the initiative to cross Mexican wheat with fungus-resistant varieties from elsewhere. Mexican crops became fungus-free, and Mexican farmers could now feed themselves and sell the surplus.

Borlaug achieved a more spectacular breakthrough, obtained again by crossing varieties, in 1953. He grew a short wheat strain, initially from Hokkaido, Japan, with a large seed head; this strain could quadruple outputs. In 1967, when a famine struck India, M. S. Swaminathan, a plant scientist working in New Delhi, learned of Borlaug’s breakthrough. Indira Gandhi was then prime minister. A fierce nationalist, she wanted no help from abroad—and certainly not from the United States. Swaminathan, however, convinced Gandhi to listen to Borlaug. When Swaminathan reached him by phone in Mexico, Borlaug packed some of his miracle dwarf-wheat seeds into his attaché case and took the next plane to India. Together with Swaminathan, Borlaug adapted the semi-dwarf wheat to India’s local conditions. Later, Swaminathan would apply the same techniques to rice. The semi-dwarf wheat for northern India and semi-dwarf rice for southern India shifted the country from famine to agricultural surplus. Under the guidance of Swaminathan, with the constant supervision of his mentor, the semi-dwarf rice conquered the rest of Asia.

More at

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/eon0914gs.html