The Hindu Business Line : TNAU confers doctorate on Kurien

The former chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul), Dr Verghese Kurien, was on Wednesday conferred a honorary doctorate (doctor of science) by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) here for his contribution to the country's milk revolution under the cooperative dairy development programme.

The university also conferred the honorary doctorate on noted US agriculture scientist and former associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation's food security programme, Dr John C. O'Toole, for his contribution in developing genetically-improved, drought-tolerant rice cultivation. Dr Toole, who had the mandate to bring 10 countries of South and South-East Asia into the foundation's international programme on rice bio-technology, was responsible for formulating the foundation's programme on `resilient crops for water-limited environments' with a focus on genetic improvement of drought-tolerant rice in Asia and Maize in Africa.

Dr Kurien and Dr Toole were honoured at the 27th annual convocation of the TNAU presided over by the Tamil Nadu Governor, Dr Surjit Singh Barnala.

While accepting the honour, Dr Kurien said that while the country attained self-sufficiency in food production, it failed to achieve the desired growth rate in agriculture. The decelerated growth was partly due to shift in the area under food grains to non-food grain crops. Competitive and sustainable agriculture faced threats from pressures on soil, water and global climate changes and no strategy of reform could succeed without a broad-based agriculture development, he pointed out.

He suggested public-private initiative in the area of investment in rain-fed area farming through bio-technology and risk minimisation through credit and insurance market support.

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