Greetings to all. Hope you all are well and in good health. We, all know and believe that, we have to learn everyday as well as to know something new everyday. We also are trying this. We are trying to know and learn something new everyday and also want to share our learnings with you.

In previous days, we learned about precision farming, organic farming, root farming, aquaponics, mushroom farming.

Today we will know about a scientist whose contribution in agriculture is peerless. It can be said that, today whatever development of agriculture happened was started from his contribution.

Today, we will know about the Father of “Green Revolution” Dr. Norman Borlaug.

Father of Green Revolution:

Dr. Norman Ernest Borlaug(March 25,1914-September 12,2009)

This American Agronomist usually called the father of “Green Revolution” and also credited for saving over one billion people from starving’s.

Borlaug, when was 7 years old, he used to work at his family farm of 106 acre. He used to do fishing, hunting and raising corn, cattle, pigs, chicken. He completed his primary education from rural schools. He was a member of football, baseball, wrestling team of his school.

For his Higher education, he left his family farm and took admission at University of Minnesota. And completed B.S in Forestry(1937) and Ph.D in Plant Pathology and Genetics(1942).

He bred high-yield, disease-resistant Wheat Varieties, which at that time improved the Food Security in Mexico, Pakistan, India very much. When he started working with Wheat in Mexico, that time working with crops was not so easy, the time was difficult for him because of lack of trained scientists and necessary equipments. Also, Local Farmers were against of wheat production because they suffered huge loss of crops due to stem rust.

But, Borlaug did not lose hope, he worked for ten years tirelessly. Finally, he succeeded to bred disease-resistant Wheat Varieties. As a result, the development of Indica and Jabonica rice varieties. The colleagues of Borlaug were abled to grow high-yield rice varieties.

Borlaug always tried to yield high without deforestation which also known as “Borlaug Hypothesis”.

He was awarded “Noble Peace Prize” in 1970 for his contribution to World Food Supply. Besides this he was awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom, Padma Bivushan and so many awards and honors.

He wanted to start an internet-based learning company regarding agriculture and food industry in 2000. But, due to some reasons it stopped in 2001.

In 2005, being concerned of lack of farming land, He said that, “We have to increase our World Food Supply double times by 2050”. He also said to focus on Multidisciplinary research for further production, specially to increase crop’s immunity, so that, they can resist any kind of diseases. His Dream was to transfer the immunity of rice to other crops(Wheat, Barley, Corn) and also to transfer bread-wheat protein to other crops, specially wheat and rice.

Prema Paul
Food Technology and Rural Industries department
Bangladesh Agricultural University

Image source: Bold Business