Modern figure
Gurdev Singh Khush
ਗੁਰਦੇਵ ਸਿੰਘ ਖੁਸ਼گُردیو خش
Rice breeder from a village near Jalandhar whose varieties, grown across Asia, helped feed hundreds of millions of people.
Gurdev Khush grew up in Rurka Kalan in Jalandhar district, studied at the agricultural college in Ludhiana and in California, and in 1967 joined the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines.
There he bred more than three hundred new kinds of rice. One, IR36, was in the 1980s the most widely planted crop variety in the world. In 1996 he shared the World Food Prize.