Tuteja Narendra Gill Sarvajeet S. - Climate Change and Abiotic Stress Tolerance

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Dedication

Professor M.S. Swaminathan

This book is dedicated to Professor M.S. Swaminathan the Father of the Green Revolution in India.

Professor M.S. Swaminathan was born in Kumbakonam, Tamil Nadu, India on 7 August 1925 and obtained his B.Sc. in 1947 from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. He did post-graduation work in genetics and plant breeding in 1949 at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). He earned his Ph.D degree in 1952 from the University of Cambridge, UK, for his thesis, Species differentiation, and the nature of polyploidy in certain species of the genus Solanum section Tuberarium. His work presented a new concept of the species relationships within the tuber-bearing Solanum . He undertook post-doctoral research at the University of Wisconsin and returned back to India in 1954 to serve the country. Professor Swaminathan is a renowned Plant Geneticist for his leading role in India's Green Revolution a program under which high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice seedlings were planted in the fields of poor farmers. Professor Swaminathan has been acclaimed by TIME magazine as one of the 20 most influential Asians of the twentieth century and one of the only three from India, the other two being Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He has been described by the UN Environment Programme as the Father of Economic Ecology and by Javier Perez de Cuellar, Secretary General of the United Nations (19821991), as a living legend who will go into the annals of history as a world scientist of rare distinction. A plant geneticist by training, Professor Swaminathan's contributions to the agricultural renaissance of India have led to his being widely referred to as the scientific leader of the green revolution movement. His advocacy of sustainable agriculture leading to an ever-green revolution makes him an acknowledged world leader in the field of sustainable food security. He is known as the Father of the Green Revolution in India for his leadership and success in introducing and further developing high-yielding varieties of wheat in India. The International Association of Women and Development conferred on him the first international award for significant contributions to promoting the knowledge, skill, and technological empowerment of women in agriculture, and for his pioneering role in mainstreaming gender considerations in agriculture and rural development. Professor Swaminathan has served as Director of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi (19661972), Director General of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Agricultural Research and Education (19721979), Principal Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture (19791980), Acting Deputy Chairman, and later Member, Union Planning Commission (19801982), and Director General of the International Rice Research Institute, the Philippines (19821988). Currently, he holds the UNESCO Chair in Eco-technology and is Chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai.

Professor Swaminathan is Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian and Chinese Academies of Sciences in addition to the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Professor Swaminathan was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership in 1971, the Albert Einstein World Science Award in 1986, the first World Food Prize in 1987, and the Volvo and Tyler Prize for Environment, the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Medal and the Mahatma Gandhi Prize of UNESCO in 2000. Professor Swaminathan has received 66 honorary doctorate degrees from universities around the world.

Foreword

I am delighted to write the foreword for this book that deals with a subject of huge importance to hundreds of millions of farmers across the globe. Research on the impacts of climate change on agriculture, in general, and rainfed agriculture, in particular, has been largely deficient, except till very recently. However, recently generated knowledge on the subject provides a strong basis for compiling whatever work has been done in the field and disseminating it on a large scale. This particular book dealing with various aspects related to stress tolerance and how this would be affected by climate change is a major step forward in improving our understating of the subject. It is significant that the hundreds of millions of small farmers across the world who are largely dependent on rainfed agriculture already face a number of stresses resulting from the very nature of their activities and the implications for livelihoods dependent on rainfed agriculture are of great significance. The impacts of climate change generally tend to exacerbate these stresses.