IN MEMORIUM

Abstract

One of our senior life member and an experienced wheat and triticale breeder, associated with Division of Genetics, IARI for more than 40 years, Dr. Madhav Ganesh Joshi, Ex Principal Scientist, passed away on July 4, 2000 at New Delhi. Born on 6th January, 1925 at Belgaum in Karnataka, Joshi graduated with a degree in Agriculture and started his career first as an Air Force Officer for a brief period. He joined his scientific career with ICAR on 26th November, 1952 at IAR! Wheat Breeding Station, Indore (M.P.) and then moved to IAR! Regional Research Station, Pusa (Bihar) as Assistant Geneticist (Essential Oils). From Pusa (Bihar) he moved to 1AR! Regional Station, Jamnagar in Gujarat and continued to work on essential oils. To improve his academic career Joshi moved to IAR!, New Delhi and submitted his thesis for Associateship (M.sc.) of 1AR! on the topic "Inheritance studies in some inter-varietal crosses of wheat" under the guidance of Mr. S. Sen in 1952. After the associateship, he joined the IAR! wheat group and was assigned the job of distant hybridization in wheat. In those early days Joshi made some important contributions in the field of inter-generic and inter-specific hybridization. For a brief period he had an opportunity of working on spice crops also where he could make good use of his knowledge of essential oils obtained earlier at Pusa and Jamnagar. Later on Joshi worked for his PhD. with Dr. M.s. Swaminathan and obtained degree in 1969 in Genetics and Cytogenetics from IAR! on the topic "Genetic affinities and extent of divergence among tetraploid Triticum species and their subspecies". Even after his doctorate, Dr. Joshi continued to work on distant hybridization in wheat and made significant contribution by developing several promising genetic stocks. The wheat component lines developed by Dr. Joshi through inter-specific hybridization got due recognition at national and international fora. The genetic stocks developed by him have been successfully used in efforts to achieve higher yields in wheat through compon~nt breeding.