About Norman E. Borlaug Award:
- The award recognises exceptional scientists under 40 and someone who works in the field of food and nutrition security and hunger eradication.
- It is given in memory of the Nobel awardee and Green Revolution's chief architect Dr Norman Borlaug.
- The award will honour an individual who is working closely and directly “in the field” or at the production or processing level with farmers, animal herders, fishers or others in rural communities in any discipline or enterprise across the entire food production, processing, and distribution chain.
- The award diploma incorporates the image of Dr. Borlaug at work in the fields of Mexico and a cash prize of $10,000.
- It is endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and will be presented every October in Des Moines, Iowa, by the World Food Prize Foundation.
- Other Indian recipients: Aditi Mukherji (2012) and Mahalingam Govindaraj (2022).
Contributions of Swati Nayak
- She introduced Sahbhagi Dhan’, a drought-tolerant variety rice suitable for hilly uplands, and ‘BINA Dhan-11’, which is flood-tolerant.
- BINA-Dhan-11’, which contains a submergence-tolerant Sub1 gene identified from an indigenous land race of Odisha.
- The Sub1 gene has been incorporated into many existing popular high-yielding varieties such as ‘Samba Mahsuri’, ‘Swarna’ and ‘Ranjit’.
- There are, likewise, other drought-tolerant varieties, such as ‘DRR Dhan 42’ and ‘DRR Dhan 44’.
