Krishnaswami Ramiah

Krishnaswami Ramiah, born in 1892 in Kizhakarai and died in 1988 in Bengaluru, was an Indian agricultural scientist and geneticist who became the founder director of the Central Rice Research Institute at Cuttack when it was established in 1946. Starting his career in 1914 at the Paddy Breeding Station in Coimbatore, he introduced systematic hybridization programs into Indian rice breeding and developed varieties including GEB 24, ADT 3, CO 4 and CO 25; GEB 24 alone became a progenitor for 83 further rice varieties developed across multiple countries, and he received India's Padma Shri in 1957 and Padma Bhushan in 1970.