Henry Beachell

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Henry Monroe Beachell (September 21, 1906 – December 13, 2006) was an American plant breeder. His research led to the development of "miracle rice" - hybrid rice cultivars that saved millions of people around the world from starvation. "Hank" Beachell has been called the most important person in rice improvement in the world. As farmers planted higher yielding rice, nutrition improved in many Asian countries, and farmers increased their incomes. For his efforts, he received at age 90 the 1996 World Food Prize, along with his fellow rice-breeder Dr. Gurdev Khush from India. [1]

Born in Waverly, Nebraska to William Albert and Alice Leona Degler Beachell, Hank Beachell and his family moved to a corn and wheat farm in western Nebraska. In 1930 he earned an agronomy degree from the University of Nebraska. After graduate study in Kansas, Beachell worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Texas. There he created nine rice varieties, which eventually accounted for more than 90 percent of the U.S. long-grain rice production. [2]

After retiring from USDA in 1963, Beachell went to work for fellow World Food Prize Laureate Dr. Robert Chandler at the International 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 of Japan in 1987. He received the John Scott Medal and the Premium of the City of Philadelphia in 1969, the IRRI Award in 1972, and the Kansas State Medallion Award in 1998. His honorary doctorates come from the University of Nebraska and Seoul 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 with Rice-Tec, the only commercial hybrid rice-breeding program in the U.S., until his passing. Dr. Beachell died, aged 100, at his home in Alvin, Texas.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ 1996 World Food Prize Laureates. The World Food Prize (2006). Retrieved on 2008-05-09.

[edit] External links

Honorary titles
Preceded by
Hans Rudolf Herren		 World Food Prize
1996		 Succeeded by
Smith and Adkisson
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