Green Revolution

The term Green Revolution was coined by William S. Gaud in 1968 to describe the cumulative outcome of a series of research, development, innovation and technology-transfer efforts that dramatically raised agricultural production, especially of wheat and rice, across the developing world between the 1940s and the late 1960s. Also called the Third Agricultural Revolution, it was an intensive 1960s programme that raised crop yields in developing countries by introducing high-yielding, disease-resistant varieties together with expanded irrigation, greater fertilizer use and improved agricultural management. The programme began in Mexico in the 1940s and was later carried successfully into parts of India, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. In India, Dr B. P. Pal, then Director of IARI, invited Dr Norman E. Borlaug to visit and arranged for M. S. Swaminathan to obtain dwarf Mexican wheat carrying the Norin-10 dwarfing genes, which gave the plant a high photosynthetic rate per unit leaf area along with greater lodging resistance. Semi-dwarf Mexican wheat was introduced into India in 1963, giving rise to widely grown varieties such as Sonora 64, Sonalika and Kalyansona with broad resistance to major biotic and abiotic stresses. In parallel, M. S. Swaminathan produced India's first semi-dwarf, fertiliser-responsive rice hybrid, Taichung Native-1 (TN1), from a Taiwanese variety in 1956, introduced from 1966 onward, which was later followed by the better-yielding semi-dwarf varieties Jaya and Ratna. Norman Borlaug, who led this work at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Sonora, Mexico, received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for it; M. S. Swaminathan, who developed the amber-grained mutation-bred wheat variety Sharbati Sonora, is credited as the 'Father of the Green Revolution in India'; and Nel Jayaraman of Adirangam village, Tiruvarur district, a disciple of Dr Nammalvar, worked for decades to c …