Venkata Rao K. Badami

Venkata Rao Krishnaji Badami (1888 to 1946) was an Indian agronomist and plant breeding pioneer who worked in the Mysore Department of Agriculture. Born in Mysore, he trained at the College of Agriculture in Coimbatore, joined the department in 1913 as a junior assistant botanist and took a doctorate at Cambridge under Rowland Biffen in 1929 with a thesis on inheritance in the groundnut. He became economic botanist in 1929, principal of the Hebbal agricultural school in 1931 and deputy director of agriculture in 1934. He helped produce the sugarcane varieties HM 320 and HM 544, the paddy S 661 and varieties of ragi and groundnut, and in 1933 he was among the first to use X-ray induced mutations to breed sugarcane, which gave the mys-ray mutants. He later served as deputy director of agriculture for Orissa and principal of the Institute of Agricultural Research at Benares Hindu University.