(Image courtesy: www.worldfoodprize.org)

(Image courtesy: www.worldfoodprize.org)

(Image courtesy: www.worldfoodprize.org)

CHENNAI: Indian scientist Sanjaya Rajaram has won the prestigious World Food Prize , considered the Nobel prize of food and agriculture, for 2014 for his contribution to developing high-yield wheat cultivars 'Kauz' and 'Attila'.The wheat varieties produce at least 15% higher a yield than any other type, by holding more grains on each stalk, and are currently cultivated over more than 40 million hectares across the world.Rajaram is the seventh Indian to win the prize, instituted by agriculture scientist Norman E Borlaug in 1986. In a research career of 50 years, Rajaram has developed more than 400 varieties of wheat and took forward Borlaug's wheat revolution that is credited with saving millions of lives in developing countries.M S Swaminathan, founder MSSRF and chair of the global jury for the World Food Prize, announced the prize in Chennai. "Sanjaya Rajaram is a person whose remarkable work saved millions of people from hunger and poverty. As a successor of Norman Borlaug, it is fitting that Rajaram's work gets this recognition in a year when we are celebrating the centennial year of Borlaug."The award was officially announced by US secretary of state John Kerry in Washington.Rajaram used winter and spring wheat gene pools and shuttle breeding and mega environment testing to create the high yielding wheat varieties.He was a student of Swaminathan and Borlaug later brought him into the wheat breeding programme at CIMMYT International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center."Working for the poor and the hungry was the trademark of Rajaram. Borlaug was the main spirit of Rajaram's work," said G Venkataramani, Rajaram's biographer. "He is constantly reminded of what Borlaug had told him in 1984: Take care of sustaining the Green Revolution in India and Pakistan.""Borlaug had said, 'If anything goes wrong there, everything will go wrong.' Rajaram would say that those words guided him through life," Venkataramani said.Born in Varanasi in 1943, Rajaram graduated with a BSc in agriculture from University of Gorakhpur and did an MSc in genetics and plant breeding from IARI before earning a PhD from the University of Sydney . He has more than 400 research publications to his credit and has mentored hundreds of scientists across the world.Rajaram was director of wheat research at CIMMYT after Borlaug, director of ICARDA's biodiversity and integrated gene management programme and consultant to many governments and international organizations.He is now owner and director of research and development for Resource Seed Mexicana (RSM), a company engaged in the development and promotion of wheat varieties in Mexico, India, Egypt and Australia.Other Indians who have won the World Food Prize include M S Swaminathan and Verghese Kurian, founder of Operation Flood, which made India a milk-sufficient nation.