CIMMYT joins with members of the international development community to mourn the passing of renowned wheat geneticist and “Father of the Green Revolution in India,” Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan who died on September 27 at the age of 98.
Swaminathan devoted his life to sustainably feeding the world. His vision reshaped India almost overnight to a breadbasket for South Asia, through adoption of innovative high-yield wheat varieties and efficient farming techniques for Indian farmers. TIME magazine acclaimed him as one of the twenty most influential Asians of the 20th Century, making him one of three from India to be named alongside Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore.
Swaminathan began his career in the world of academia. After earning his Ph.D. in plant genetics from Cambridge University in 1952, he moved to the United States to continue his research as a professor; however, his home country India eventually called him back home. With the crisis of a rapidly increasing population and low food production, Swaminathan returned to become a scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), where he later served as Director from 1961 to 1972.
It was during this time that he began his collaboration scientist Norman Borlaug, future Nobel Prize laureate and soon to be leader of CIMMYT wheat research. Swaminathan saw the value of the Mexican semi-dwarf wheat varieties, which were developed by Borlaug, for wheat production in India and requested that Borlaug send him a range of breeding materials containing the Norin dwarfing genes. The seeds arrived in 1963 along with Borlaug and the pair travelled the wheat-belt of India. Swaminathan arranged multi-location trials for the varieties and established an inter-disciplinary team to adapt the new varieties for Indian conditions.