Green Revolution: semi-dwarf wheat and IR8 rice
Revolución verde: trigo enano y arroz IR8
- Date
- 1960-1966 · confidence high
- Place
- CIMMYT, Ciudad Obregón, Sonora, Mexico (Borlaug); IRRI, Los Baños, Philippines (IR8, 1966)
- Credited to
- Norman Borlaug (Nobel Peace Prize 1970); Peter Jennings and Henry Beachell (IR8); Japanese dwarfing genes from Norin 10
- People
- 👤 Henry Beachell1906–2006👤 Norman Borlaug1914–2009👤 Peter Jennings1938–2005
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Short-stemmed varieties of wheat and rice that respond to fertiliser with double or triple yields, spread across Mexico, India and Asia. They averted famines predicted for hundreds of millions of people.
What it led to
- Food self-sufficiency in India and Mexico and the doubling of world production
- Dependence on fertiliser, irrigation and pesticides and their environmental damage
- Transgenic crops and agricultural biotechnology
Built on
- Indica rice domesticationc. 2000 BCE
- Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer1913–1920s
- Haber-Bosch fertilisers
- Mendelian genetics
- irrigation
Made possible
- Hybrid rice1973
- Glyphosate and GM crops (Flavr Savr, Roundup Ready, Bt)1974-1996
- industrial agriculture in Asia