M. S. Swaminathan, 1925-2023

India once reeled under chronic hunger. The famine of 1943 killed as many as 3.8 million people. But since then, India transformed itself into a big grain exporter. Credit for this goes to agronomist M S Swaminathan who died on 28 September in Chennai aged 98.

The Bengal famine pushed young Swaminathan to pursue agricultural science, and after returning to India in 1954 after his studies, he dedicated his life to research into grain production.   

Swaminathan was the architect of the Green Revolution and developed several high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice. His collaboration with Norman Borlaug on Mexican dwarf varieties of wheat in particular saved India and Pakistan from famine in the 1960s.

Borlaug went on to win a Nobel Peace Prize, toured India and sent a range of Mexican dwarf varieties of wheat to be bred with Japanese strains. Initial testing found the crop to be high-yield, disease-free and good quality.

Modifications were made in the laboratory to better suit Indian conditions, and when sown in 1968, production per hectare was impressive. By 1971, India was food-sufficient, and a few years later, net exporter of grain.

Next-door Nepal and South Asia also used Swaminathan’s hybrids to increase productivity to varying degrees of success. However, the seeds required chemical fertiliser and pesticides reducing soil richness. High-yield hybrids also replaced indigenous varieties of grains, many of which have now disappeared. Genetically engineered crops are also often not as adaptable or suitable to the land.

Swaminathan has also been critiqued for prioritising economy over ecology, and how indigenous seeds that could have adapted better to climate change have now been replaced. In later years Swaminathan himself advocated for sustainable agriculture, imploring the Indian government to use genetically engineered seeds only as a last resort.  

Sonia Awale