Man whose pioneering research fed the world

Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, owe their lives to Norman Borlaug, a central figure in the "Green Revolution", the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s, for his extraordinary reversal of the food shortages that haunted the developing world in the latter half of the 20th century. Collaborating with Mexican scientists for more than 20 years to improve wheat yields, he helped in averting many of the mass starvations widely predicted as the rapid expansion in population put an increasing strain on food supplies.

An agriculture scientist from America's Midwest, in 1944 Borlaug was assigned the task of organising and directing the Co-operative Wheat Research and Production Program in Mexico. The programme, a joint undertaking by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation, involved scientific research in genetics, plant breeding, soil science and cereal technology. When Borlaug and his colleagues were successful in producing a new type of high-yield dwarf wheat that was resistant to disease and infestation, he argued that farmers elsewhere in the world should be able to take advantage of such technology.

The idea met with marked opposition from the grain monopolies, but by 1965 famine on the subcontinent was so bad that the Indian and Pakistani governments committed themselves to trying the dwarf wheat. The first shipment bearing the miracle seeds left Los Angeles after encountering a number of obstacles, including the infamous race riots in the Watts district of LA. Borlaug recalled, "I went to bed thinking the problem was at last solved, and woke up to the news that war had broken out between India and Pakistan."

War notwithstanding, within the space of five years wheat yields in Pakistan had nearly doubled. In India, the crop was so successful the country became a net exporter, briefly, in the 1980s. By the late 1970s, the technology had spread to North Africa and the Middle East. Born in Cresco, Iowa, into a fourth-generation family of Norwegian immigrants the young Norman Ernest Borlaug witnessed the transformation of American's Midwest from breadbasket to Dust Bowl during the severe droughts of the 1930s, and the phenomenon piqued his interest in farming methods. He entered college as the Depression began, working in the Northeastern Forestry Service before pursuing a graduate degree in plant pathology at the University of Minnesota. From 1942, for two years, he served as a microbiologist on the staff of the du Pont de Nemours Foundation.

Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, Borlaug was little recognised in his native America, partly due to the focus of his work falling in the developing world, and thus received little domestic media attention. This was partly because his mission was seen by many as antithetical to the natural order: famine, it was argued, was a necessary restraint on the human population. By the 1980s, he had fallen from grace. High-yield agriculture became the bête noire of environmentalists, and later, Borlaug suffered for his supposed association with the new controversial practice of genetically modifying crops. When he turned his attention to Africa, lobbyists persuaded the World Bank not to support many proposed agricultural projects.

He was drawn out of retirement in 1984 by the Japanese industrialist Ryoichi Sasakawa to work for the Sasakawa-Global 2000 programme on projects in Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana and Togo, among other African states. The results were less spectacular than on the subcontinent, but he believed absolutely that the Green Revolution could, ultimately, make Africa productive and self-sufficient. Borlaug was predeceased by his wife Margaret; he is survived by their son and daughter.

Born March 25, 1914. He died on September 12. * The National