LIFE BOX 3.1. GURDEV SINGH KHUSHGurdev Singh Khush, Former Head of Plant Breeding, Genetics and
Biotechnology, International Rice Research Institute, Philippines, and
Adjunct Professor, University of California Davis; Winner of the Japan
Prize (1987), World Food Prize (1996) and Wolf Prize (2000); Member of
National Academy of Sciences and Royal Society of LondonGurdev KhushI was born in a farming family in
Punjab, India in 1935. As I was
growing up I took part in various
farming operations and developed an
interest in plants. Farm yields were
extremely low and poverty was
rampant in farming communities. My
father was the first person in our
village of about 5000 to graduate from
high school. He inculcated in me the
value of education. I chose to major in
plant breeding as an undergraduate at
the Government Agricultural College
(now Punjab Agricultural University)
in Ludhiana and graduated in 1955.
Facilities for higher education in India
at that time were very limited and I
decided to study abroad. I borrowed
some money and proceeded to England
where I worked in a factory for a year
and a half. I returned the borrowed
money and saved enough for travel to
the USA. I enrolled at the University
of California, Davis in 1957 for a docto-
rate in Plant Genetics. I had the good
fortune to work under the supervision
of a world renowned biologist
Professor G. Ledyard Stebbins. Aftercompleting my Ph.D. in 1960, I joined
the group of another equally outstanding
geneticist, Professor Charles M. Rick, as
a post-doctoral associate and worked on
cytogenetics of tomatoes for seven
years. My solid background in plant
genetics proved to be extremely useful
in my future career as a plant breeder.
In 1966 I was offered the position of a
Plant Breeder at the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI) and I moved
to the Philipines in August 1967.
The 1950s and 1960s were decades of
despair with regard to the world’s ability
tocopewith food-population balance,par-
ticularlyinthetropics.Thecultivated-land
frontier was closing in most Asian
countries, while population growth rates
were accelerating because of rapidly
declining mortality rates resulting from
modern medicine and health care. IRRI
was established to address the problem
of stagnant rice yields, the main cause
of poverty and hunger in Asia.
Conventional rice varieties were tall and
lodging susceptible. When nitrogenous
fertilizer was applied those varieties
grew even taller, lodged badly, and
yields were actually reduced. A break-
through occurred in doubling the yield
potential of rice through reducing the
plant stature by introduction of a dwarfing
gene. The first short-statured rice variety
IR8 was lodging resistant and highly
responsive to nitrogenous fertilizer. It
had double the yield potential of conven-
tional varieties. However, it had poor
grain quality and was susceptible to
diseases and insects. The major focus of
my research was to develop improved
germplasm with high yield, shorter
growth duration, superior grain quality78 PLANT BREEDING