ABSTRACT
Trivandrum was only an interlude in Janaki’s career; the fact that her research was being put on the back burner made her restless and unhappy. She grew anxious with time, and when she received news of her being appointed sugarcane cytologist at the Breeding Station in Coimbatore, she was overjoyed. After very long, she had a salary that enabled her to rent a nice bungalow and buy a small car for her collecting activity. She found the sugarcane material at the Station aching to disclose interesting things from the point of view of its cytology, and she also began her own breeding experiments. In 1935, she would represent the government at two Congresses—in Amsterdam and Cambridge. It was also at this time that she came to be exposed to the work of Russian cytogeneticist Nikolai Vavilov on the centre of origin of cultivated plants; Vavilov would become her muse, and she would dream of going to Russia to work at his institution.
