Sunday 27 July 2014

…and the 2014 WFP Laureate is…



The 2014 World Food Price Laureate is the eminent Plant Scientist Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram for his scientific research that led to a prodigious increase in world wheat production – by more than 200 million tons – building upon the successes of the Green Revolution. Dr. Rajaram’s crossing of winter and spring wheat varieties, led to his development of plants that have higher yields and dependability under a wide range of environments around the world.

His breakthrough breeding technologies have had a far-reaching and significant impact in providing more nutritious food around the globe and alleviating world hunger. Dr. Rajaram succeeded Dr. NormanBorlaug in leading CIMMYT's wheat breeding program, and developed an astounding 480 wheat varieties that have been released in 51 countries on six continents and have been widely adopted by small- and large-scale farmers alike.
Realizing the importance of freely sharing knowledge to provide developing countries with the ability to grow more food, Rajaram launched efforts to expand the global scientific wheat network – a worldwide exchange of genetic resources, information and innovations among researchers – which had not been done before. This led to the accelerated development and worldwide spread of high-yielding wheat varieties, which has kept the expansion of global wheat production ahead of population growth and made wheat even more accessible to the world’s poor. He also realized the importance of nutrition to the poor and strongly supported research on micronutrient-enriched wheat varieties.
In 2007, Dr. Borlaug expressed high praise for Rajaram in a personal note: “You have developed into the greatest present-day wheat scientist in the world…have made and continue to make many important contributions to further improve world wheat production…have learned to work effectively in many different countries with political leaders of different ideologies…and are a scientist of great vision.”

Respect to this great Scientist#


Culled from 2014-Rajaram. The World Food Price. Retrieved from http://www.worldfoodprize.org/index.cfm?nodeID=74183&audienceID=1 on 26, July, 2014.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment