Connections to the Green Revolution

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, the Indian "Father of the Green Revolution" turned 90 last week.

In a tribute published in the Indian Express, it was interesting to note the cross-border connections and linkages that led up to the revolution in Indian agriculture, which turned the country from a basket case to a net exporter of foodgrains.

I had always thought that it was Norman Borlaugh who was at the drivers seat. Now it turns out that it was MSS who set the bus-routes in the fist place!

Consider the sequence of events:

• In 1950, Japan, a nation obsessed with rice production, comes up with a hybrid variety of wheat - Norin-10 - a semi-dwarf with large grain bearing panicles or earheads.
• Samples of Norin-10 collected by Samuel Cecil Salmon, an agronomist under American occupation, and taken to USA
• At Washington State University, Samuel Vogel uses Norin-10 to breed a winter wheat, Gaines containing Norin-10 dwarfing genes and giving very high yeilds
• MSS requests Vogel for Gaines seeds. He gets them with a suggestion to contact Norman Borlaugh who was working on spring-wheat (more suitable to India) using the same genes in Mexico
• In 1963 Boulaugh brings his best Mexican dwarfs - Sonora-64 and Lerma Rojo 64 - to India, helps breed blockbuster wheat varieties that launched the Green Revolution - Kalyan Sona, Sonalika, Arjun, Janak, HD-2285 and HD-2239. Ditto for rice - Jaya, Padma, IR-8

So, essentially, India owes its Green Revolution to MSS and his connections to the open networks created by the higher education system in USA. It is worth noting that it was not a Japanese wheat scientist who noticed that his innovation could have applications in India, nor was it an American conducting field trails in Mexico. It had to be an Indian tuned to the outside world, seeking solutions to local problems.

Do we have a new generation of people like MSS who are tuned in to the networks and linkages that would help India solve its most critical problems?

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LINKS

* Damodaran, Harish (2015): A Living Legend: Swaminathan@90 -- http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/a-living-legend-swaminathan90/

* Origin, History and Uses of Norin-10 Wheat - https://dl.sciencesocieties.org/publications/cs/abstracts/8/6/CS0080060686?access=0&view=pdf

Remembering Borlaugh

Last year, India set a new record in wheat production -- 95.85 million tonnes. This took the total food-grain production in the country to 264.38 million tonnes - another record in itself. To put the figures in perspective, consider a simple fact: At the time of independence we produced just 6 million tonnes of wheat.

All this we can trace back to the vision of one man - Norman Borlaugh.

As a young American plant pathologist he went to Mexico in 1944 to help fight hunger. Fifteen years of research in classical, selective breeding led him a dwarf variety of wheat which not only resisted rust, but also had a new plant gene that made them shorter with sturdier stalks which were able to withstand the weight of more abundantly grained wheat ears. His efforts resulted in a six-fold increase in Mexican wheat production.

The Indian government invited Borlaugh in 1966, at a time when the country had been reduced to a basket-case by successive droughts. He came in with a sackful of Mexican  wheat seeds. The rest, as they say, is history -- and the Green Revolution.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Tribute - http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/tribute-to-a-saint-who-did-miracle-with-wheat-114091200028_1.html
*Gene Revolution - the Antecedents - http://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/shreekant-sambrani-gene-revolution-the-antecedents-113012200098_1.html