| Green Revolution Hero Bows Out |
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| Friday, 24 August 2001 | |
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Los Baños, Philippines - The man who is often referred to as one of the fathers of the Green Revolution in rice farming, Dr. Gurdev Khush, retires this year as head of IRRI's plant breeding program after working for the institute for 34 years. It is a measure of Dr. Khush's stature as the world's foremost rice breeder that, in any rice field, anywhere in the world, there's a 60 percent chance that the rice was either bred at IRRI under his leadership or developed from IRRI varieties. It is a measure of the man that, on the eve of his retirement, he hotly denies that IRRI should be recognized solely as a center for germplasm development, and not for its extensive research in the field of natural resource management. "Less than 30 percent of IRRI's budget over the years has been spent on crop improvement and enhancement of germplasm," he declares. "The rest has been spent on the multitude of issues that might, these days, be regarded as integrated natural resource management." With a smile, he adds, "We used to call it agronomy." "The idea that IRRI is only a breeding center is a misconception," he continues. "We focus our research programs on the known needs of farming communities. Natural resources, and their management, are the very first things we consider. The issues that drive a breeding program include yield, diseases, pest management, responsiveness to nutrients, and tolerance for abiotic stress [drought and saline or acid soils, for example] and weeds. All of these things have to do with the natural environment." In his 34 years at IRRI, Dr. Khush has become one of the world's most decorated scientists, winning the Japan Prize in 1987, the World Food Prize in 1996, both the Wolf Prize from Israel and the Padma Shri Award from his native India in 2000, and the International Scientific and Technical Cooperation Award of the People’s Republic of China this year. Dr. Khush's final work, the creation of IRRI's new plant type, is almost complete. The plants are already yielding strongly in temperate areas of China, and they are expected to be ready for farmers in tropical Asia by 2005. Developing the new plant type has taken nearly 12 years of hard and sometimes disheartening work. It is designed to yield up to 12 tons per hectare in irrigated tropical conditions, but adjusting its genetic characteristics to match tastes and environmental conditions has been more difficult than expected. Nevertheless, it's almost "ready for the road." "I expect it to move very quickly into farmers' fields once it is released," Dr. Khush says. "It will give farmers the chance to increase their yields, so it will spread quickly. Already it is yielding 13 tons per hectare in temperate China." Looking back on his three and a half decades with IRRI, Dr. Khush says he has come to love the Institute as his home. "It provided me an excellent opportunity for professional development and allowed me to contribute to world food security." He believes that IRRI will have an important role to play in developing technologies for food security, environmental protection, and poverty alleviation for many years to come. He also believes that the Institute should be developing collaborative arrangements with private-sector corporations. "IRRI has tremendous assets that the private sector does not possess, such as genetic resources, knowledge, and links with the national agricultural research and extension systems of rice-growing countries. The private sector, on the other hand, has resources to invest in cutting-edge science and the generation of technologies. So, the roles of IRRI and the private sector should be synergistic." A Farmer's Son Gurdev Singh Khush was born the son of a farmer in the village of Rurkee, in Punjab, India, in 1935. After excelling at high school, he went on to graduate from Punjab Agricultural University with a bachelor's degree in science, majoring in plant breeding. Determined to further his studies in the United States, the young Khush borrowed money from relatives and went to England, where he worked as a laborer in a canning factory to earn his fare to America. There, he obtained a scholarship to study genetics at the University of California, Davis, and did so well that he gained his Ph.D. in genetics in less than three years. He was not yet 25 years old. Dr. Khush then spent seven years at the University of California, Davis, researching the cytogenetics of tomatoes. He joined IRRI as a plant breeder in August 1967, when he was 32, and immediately began to make his mark on food production in a hungry developing world. He has since played a key role in developing more than 300 rice varieties in IRRI's race to keep rice production ahead of population growth. One of them, IR36, was released in 1976 to become the most widely planted variety of rice, or of any other food crop, the world has ever known. It was planted on 11 million hectares in Asia in the 1980s, yielding an additional five million tons of rice a year, boosting rice farmers' incomes by US$1 billion, and, because of its resistance to pests, saving an esti-mated $500 million a year in insecticide costs. IR64 later replaced IR36 as the world's most popular rice variety and IR72, released in 1990, became the world's highest-yielding rice variety. The Nobel laureate, Dr. Norman Borlaug, has summed up Dr. Khush's career by saying, "The impact of Dr. Khush's work upon the lives of the world's poorest people is incalculable." Busy Retirement Dr. Khush will move to California upon his retirement at the end of August, but he won't be away from IRRI for long. He will return for a few months every year to work as a consultant. Aside from this work, Dr. Khush looks forward to a busy retirement. He intends, first, to write about 10 research papers from information he has been unable, for lack of time, to compile. Then he intends to write a book on aspects of rice culture, possibly for use in high schools. After all that, he might consider an autobiography. As well, Dr. Khush has been invited to serve on the boards of several companies, but he hasn't accepted anything yet. First, he intends to spend more time with his family. His wife, Harwant, has a Ph.D. in educational management, his son Ranjiv is a molecular biologist, his eldest daughter Manjeev and youngest daughter Kiran are medical doctors in San Francisco, and a third daughter, Sonia, is an economist with the Save the Children Foundation in Washington, D.C. IRRI is the world’s leading international rice research and training center. Based in the Philippines and with offices in 11 other countries, it is an autonomous, nonprofit institution focused on improving the well-being of present and future generations of rice farmers and consumers, particularly those with low incomes, while preserving natural resources. IRRI is one of 16 Future Harvest centers funded the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an association of public and private donor agencies. For more information, visit the websites of CGIAR (www.cgiar.org) or Future Harvest (www.futureharvest.org). Future Harvest is a nonprofit organization that builds awareness and supports food and environmental research for a world with less poverty, a healthier human family, well-nourished children, and a better environment. Future Harvest supports research, promotes partnerships, and sponsors projects that bring the results of agricultural research to rural communities, farmers, and families in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. |