Tiruvadi Sambasiva Venkataraman

Rao Bahadur Sir Tiruvadi Sambasiva Iyer Venkataraman CIE, FNI, FASc (15 June 1884 – 18 January 1963) was an Indian botanist, agronomist and plant geneticist who specialised in the study and hybridisation of sugarcane. He developed or supervised the development of numerous high-yield sugarcane cultivars, which established India as the world's second largest sugar producer and sustained the sugar industries of numerous other nations, including South Africa, Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the United States.

Early life and career Venkataraman was born in Salem, Madras Presidency (now in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu) to an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family; though initially religious, he renounced religion by the age of 16. After graduating from a secondary school in Tiruchirapalli, where he was a brilliant scholar, he enrolled at Presidency College, Madras, where he decided to study botany over zoology, as he strongly disliked dissecting insects and other animals. In 1905, he graduated with a first-class honours B.A. in botany and briefly studied for an M.A. at Madras University before his appointment to the Agricultural College, Saidapet (now a constituent college of Tamil Nadu Agricultural University) as an assistant to Charles Alfred Barber, then a botanist in the Madras Presidency government service.

Following his retirement, Venkataraman agreed to conduct a survey of sugarcane research in India, but gave it up on health grounds. He subsequently retired to Madras, where he spent his time reading philosophical works and frequently writing letters to The Hindu on various subjects. When the International Society of Sugarcane Technologists decided to hold its 1956 conference in India, he chaired the section on cane breeding; during the conference, a plaque commemorating the development of the Co. 205 cultivar was unveiled at the Sugarcane Breeding Institute. In the 1942 New Year Honours list, he received a knighthood, becoming the first Indian agricultural scientist to be thus honoured, In 1956, he was conferred the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government. He was elected as a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc) in 1934, serving as its Vice-President in 1934–35, He was also a member of the International Genetics Congress Association, the Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding and the International Society of Sugarcane Technologists, and was an Honorary Fellow of the South African Sugar Technologists Association.