- Henry Beachell
Henry Monroe Beachell (
September 21 ,1906 –December 13 ,2006 ) was an American plant breeder. His research led to the development of "miracle rice" - hybridrice cultivars that saved millions of people around the world fromstarvation . "Hank" Beachell has been called the most important person in rice improvement in the world. Asfarmer s planted higher yielding rice, nutrition improved in manyAsia n countries, and farmers increased their incomes. For his efforts, he received at age 90 the 1996World Food Prize , along with his fellow rice-breeder Dr.Gurdev Khush fromIndia . [http://agnews.tamu.edu/stories/SOIL/beachell.htm]Born in
Waverly, Nebraska to William Albert and Alice Leona Degler Beachell, Hank Beachell and his family moved to a corn andwheat farm in western Nebraska. In 1930 he earned anagronomy degree from theUniversity of Nebraska . After graduate study inKansas , Beachell worked for theU.S. Department of Agriculture inTexas . There he created ninerice varieties, which eventually accounted for more than 90 percent of the U.S. long-grain rice production. [http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2006/september/16953.htm]After retiring from USDA in 1963, Beachell went to work for fellow
World Food Prize Laureate Dr.Robert Chandler at theInternational Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. It was there that Beachell produced the groundbreaking IR8 variety, often known as "miracle rice," which he continued to research and improve throughout his career.Beachell was also a committed and effective mentor to a generation of leading scientists who continued to work with IR8 and other varieties after Dr. Beachell left the Philippines in 1972 for an IRRI station in
Indonesia . After his decade of work there, Indonesian rice productivity jumped by 100 percent.Beachell was honored by the government of
Korea in 1978 and that ofJapan in 1987. He received the John Scott Medal and the Premium of the City ofPhiladelphia in 1969, theIRRI Award in 1972, and theKansas State Medallion Award in 1998. His honorary doctorates come from theUniversity of Nebraska andSeoul National University .In 1997, over sixty years after his career began, he worked with Cornell University and USDA researchers to establish a genetic seed bank for rice cultivars. His legacy also continues to be felt through the numerous scholarships he established at the University of Nebraska, Kansas State University, and Texas A&M University with the money of the
World Food Prize . Beachell consulted withRice-Tec , the only commercial hybrid rice-breeding program in the U.S., until his passing. Dr. Beachell died, aged 100, at his home inAlvin, Texas . [cite web|title = 1996 World Food Prize Laureates|publisher = The World Food Prize|date = 2006|url = http://www.worldfoodprize.org/laureates/Past/1996.htm#beachell|accessdate = 2008-05-09]References
External links
* [http://www.seedquest.com/News/releases/2006/september/16953.htm RiceTec News Release on the occasion of Dr. Beachell's 100th birthday]
* [http://agnews.tamu.edu/stories/SOIL/beachell.htm Texas A&M News Release regarding the 1990 World Food Prize]
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