The Father of Rice Revolution
05 October 2004 | News
Dr Gurdev Singh Khush
Dr Khush is one of the global leaders on crop breeding and a major brain behind the development of productive rice varieties and the Green Revolution in plant breeding. Born in the village of Rurkee in Punjab, this son of a farmer finished his Bachelor of Science from Punjab Agriculture University and went to University of California, Davis, to do his PhD. He in fact worked as a laborer in a canning factory in England to earn his money to go to America. At the age of 25, Dr Khush completed his PhD in genetics in less than three years after joining the University of California. In 1967, Dr Khush joined the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Manila and he was there till 2000 and since the past few years he has been with University of California, Davis, as adjunct professor.
Dr Khush, who joined the IRRI after postdoctoral studies on tomato breeding, became principal plant breeder and head of the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biochemistry Division, and took IRRI to the vanguard of developing 300 new rice varieties and trigger the green revolution in Asia. Dr Khush may not be a household name. But his rice varieties touch the lips of every person in Asia. In the last 35 years, he and his team at IRRI in Manila introduced several varieties like IR8, IR36, IR64 and IR72. IRRI rice varieties and their progenies are planted in over 70 percent of the world's rice-fields. The rice production around the world in 1966 was close to 257 million tonnes and today it has increased to over 700 million tonnes. Thanks to Dr Khush and IRRI.
In less than five years of joining IRRI, Dr Khush became the head of IRRI's plant breeding department and had developed his own new variety of "miracle rice", IR36. This was developed using IR8 as a genetic base and cross breeding it with 13 parent varieties from six nations. IR36 is a semi-dwarf variety that proved highly resistant to a number of the major insect pests and diseases. Further, IR36 matures rapidly in about 105 days compared to 130 days for IR8 and 150-170 days for traditional types and produces a slender grain that is preferred in many Asian countries. The combination of these characteristics soon made IR36 one of the most widely planted food crop varieties the world has ever known. However, it was not an easy acceptance though. According to Dr Khush the farmers were initially skeptical about IRRI's new grain varieties. It took almost 25 years for Dr Khush's rice initiative to see excellent results. The rice production doubled to 518 million tonnes in 1990. According to IRRI estimates, IR36 has added about 5 million tonnes of rice annually to Asia's food supply and accounts for an additional $1 billion yearly income to Asian farmers. IR64 later replaced IR36 as the world's most popular variety and IR72, released in 1990, became the world's highest-yielding variety.
In 1994, Dr Khush announced a new type of "super rice", which has the potential to increase yields by 25 percent. His final work on what is called the New Plant Type (NPT) for irrigated rice fields is complete. Developing NPT almost took 12 years and the plants were yielding strongly in temperature areas of China and are expected to be ready for farmers in tropical Asia in 2005. It is a complete redesign of the rice plant from the roots up, making it higher yielding, more vigorous, and better able to resist pests and diseases without the use of environmentally damaging pesticides. It is designed to yield up to 12 tonnes per hectare in irrigated tropical conditions, but adjusting its genetic characteristics to match tastes and environment conditions.
"When Gurdev Khush first started to develop rice varieties 34 years ago, there were few countries in Asia with the research infrastructure to work with him to adapt new varieties to local conditions," said former IRRI director general and ex-officio member Ronald P Cantrell in one of the Annual General Meetings. "But now, almost every Asian nation has some level of agricultural research capacity." Because of this, Asian countries have been able to feed their growing populations and, for the most part, maintain peace and stability. "The true Asian miracle through the 1970s and 1980s wasn't stunning economic growth. It was keeping people fed and societies relatively stable," Dr Cantrell said, "And now, with the new plant type ready for farmers' fields, we are hopeful of being able to maintain this level of progress."
Dr Khush is one of the most decorated scientists in the world, winning the Japan prize in 1987, the World Food Prize in 1996, the Wolf Prize from Israel and the Padma Shri Award from the government of India in 2000, and the China International Scientific and Technological Cooperation Award for 2001. The World Food Prize, widely regarded as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize for agriculture, is awarded by the World Food Prize Foundation based at Des Moines (USA), which he won for his contribution to "advancing human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of the world's food supply." It cited that the increased availability of rice has not only lowered costs to consumers but also enhanced the nutrition of millions of people. Caloric intake in almost all Asian nations has improved. For example, caloric intake in Indonesia increased from 81 percent of the daily requirement in 1965 to 120 percent in 1990. And all of this happened while the population of rice consumers was growing by more than two percent annually, and the availability of rice production land remained stable.
| "GM Crops Can
Contribute In Several Ways," asserts Dr Gurudev S Khush
How important are GM crops? But there is stiff opposition
to GM crops ... How can the industry counter this opposition? How can the industry get this
message across to the public? Is the opposition to GM crops
largely because the crops have been released mostly by giant multinational
companies rather than public companies? What are the major challenges
facing both global and Indian agriculture? GM crops will be helpful here. We can use both conventional methods as well as the biotechnology. Both should be used, wherever there is application. Globally there is a lot of work going on. The food security seems to be adequate. Only developing countries have some problem but most of the European countries have got good food security. What is the status of the
global agricultural production? |
The
BioSpectrum series on Biotech Gurus continues with Dr Khush who has joined
the pantheon of eminent scientists from India who have made the world
their home. Dr Khush was in Bangalore as a keynote speaker at Bangalore
Bio in July this year. N Suresh and Ch. Srinivas Rao caught up with him to
know the importance of bioagri products. Excerpts from the interview.
