A plant geneticist is being recognized for his efforts to communicate. Dr. Channapatna Prakash, an honored faculty member at Tuskegee University in Alabama, will receive the 2015 Borlaug Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST) Communication Award for decades of using the written word, public presentations, and TV and radio and social media to deliver clear, science-based information to the public and policymakers alike.
Colleagues focus on the widespread influence Prakash has had in the agricultural community. As one nominator points out, Prakash’s position involves research and teaching, but he has “arguably done more than anyone else in academia or industry to promote agricultural technologies that can help feed the world’s growing population.”
Prakash was instrumental in establishing the prestigious plant biotechnology research and training program at Tuskegee University, and he has a long list of influential publications and presentations—he has presented his messages about agriculture in more than 70 countries. Through teaching, research collaboration, and lectures, he has worked especially hard to promote biotechnology research and policy in the developing countries of Asia and Africa.
Educated in India and Australia, Prakash has a strong connection with those who have made an impact on global food production. Norman Borlaug once praised him for “bringing common sense into the use of biotechnology,” and Julie Borlaug Larson says that Prakash—much like her grandfather—is “dedicated to utilizing science and technology to improve the standard of living and quality of life for the world’s most impoverished and marginalized populations.”
Prakash will be honored at the World Food Prize Symposium on October 14, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa.