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AWARDS AND HONOURS
YB WEB DESK. Dated: 5/20/2022 4:47:17 PM
E. A. Siddiq
Ebrahimali Abubacker Siddiq (born 1937) is an Indian agricultural scientist, whose research in genetics and plant breeding is reported to have assisted in the development of various high-yielding rice varieties such as dwarf basmati and hybrid rice. The government of India honoured Siddiq in 2011 with the fourth-highest civilian award of Padma Shri. Biography With the climate change already costing farmers with decreasing crop yields (up to 10 per cent) and new crop land constraints, efforts should be made to develop hybrid varieties that can withstand physical stresses, including water submergence during severe monsoon, drought and high salinity, says E. A. Siddiq. E. A. Siddiq was born in 1937 in Ilayangudi, Small Town in Sivaganga District, Tamil Nadu, India. His graduate studies were completed in Botany (1959) from the University of Madras following which he obtained masters (1964) and doctoral degrees (1968) in Cytogenetics, under the supervision of renowned botanist, M. S. Swaminathan, from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI). His career started at his alma mater, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, as a cytogeneticist in 1968, a post he held till 1976 when he was promoted as the Senior Scientist. In 1983, he was deputed to Egypt as the Rice Breeder and in 1986, he was transferred to Philippines as the Professor of Genetics. The next year, in 1987, he returned to India as the Project Director of the Directorate of Rice Research, Hyderabad and worked there till 1994. The next move was to Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi as the Deputy Director General of the Crop Science Division. In 1997 Siddiq was honored as the National Professor of ICAR and in 2002, he took charge of the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) as the Distinguished Chair. On his retirement in 2007, he was appointed as the Adjunct Scientist at CFFD. He also holds the positions of Adjunct Professor of the University of Hyderabad, Adjunct Professor of the Indian Agricultural.