Meet the blockbuster ‘rice man’ who fed the world | India News,The Indian Express

No food crop in history has been planted in as much area as the varieties developed by Gurdev Singh Khush, the world’s most prolific, and perhaps greatest, rice breeder

Friday, Sep 09, 2022

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		HomeIndiaMeet the blockbuster 'rice man' who fed the world		

							
													Meet the blockbuster ‘rice man’ who fed the world
													
														No food crop in history has been planted in as much area as the varieties developed by Gurdev Singh Khush, the world’s most prolific, and perhaps greatest, rice breeder

															
					
											
						
														
								
									
										
											
																									
													
														 Written by 					Harish Damodaran
					
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	New Delhi | Updated: September 9, 2022  8:30:11 pm														
													
															
													
												
												


		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
				
			
		
		
			
			
			
		
	

											
											
														
														
														
													The men who fed the world: G.S. Khush with Norman Borlaug. (Express/Sourced)He’s to rice what the ‘Father of the Green Revolution’, Norman Borlaug, was to wheat. But Gurdev Singh Khush – no food crop in history has been planted on as much area worldwide as his blockbuster IR36 and IR64 varieties – is the unlikeliest of rice breeders.

For starters, Khush isn’t much of a rice eater: “I prefer wheat and chapati any day”. That makes him quite like the ‘Milkman of India’, Verghese Kurien, who simply disliked milk and could never drink it. More pertinent, though, is that Khush hadn’t really seen paddy fields till he arrived as a 32-year-old at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, The Philippines. That was in end-July 1967.

As the eldest son of a farmer Kartar Singh – they were Jat Sikhs from Rurkee village in Phillaur tehsil of Punjab’s Jalandhar district – Khush, born on August 22, 1935, recalls only maize, wheat, moong (green gram) and mash (black gram) being grown on their 15-acre land. “Rice was a minor crop in Punjab then, cultivated in low-lying bet areas around rivers and only for self-consumption,” says the 87-year-old, who was recently at his alma mater Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) to attend a two-day symposium on ‘Transforming the Green Revolution Hub of India’. Its focus was on innovations in plant breeding and policies to promote crop diversification and sustainable farming in Punjab.

The record of “not seeing rice”, right through his primary education in the village to the Khalsa High School in Bundala that was about 7 km by walk, continued even at the Government Agricultural College, Ludhiana. Khush graduated from this institution (which, in 1962, became PAU) in June 1955. His good marks secured him admission to the University of California, Davis (UCD) with a half-time assistantship to pursue a Master in Science leading to a PhD.

Rye and tomato

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/gurdev-singh-khush-rice-breeder-ir-varieties-8141097/


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