ABSTRACT
The Green Revolution in the 1970s In 1970 the American botanist, Norman Borlaug, Director of the Division for Wheat Cultivation at the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMYT) in Mexico, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was honoured for having set in motion a worldwide agricultural development, later to be called the ‘Green Revolution’. This development was based on the genetic improvement of particularly productive plants. Borlaug’s so-called ‘miracle wheat’ doubled and tripled yields in a short period of time. Similar increases were soon achieved with maize and, at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, with rice.
