Dear Editor,
I felt elated when I saw Dr Mahendra Persaud’s name mentioned as a national awardee. I must endorse the national awards committee for making the admirable recommendation that such an accolade be given to an agricultural scientist. Dr Mahendra is an accomplished, enterprising, dedicated and very young research scientist at the Burma Rice Research station. His achievements came about as a result of trial and error, but he triumphed in the end. The rice industry and the farmers benefited in special ways, so too the country at large.
This young plant breeder has been working relentlessly to propagate high-yielding hybrid varieties with resounding success. He is a home-grown scientist, not an expatriate who has been seconded to the Guyana government by the United Nations to do a short stint at the Burma research facilities and then leave. Dr Mahendra was trained in India and he is very ambitious given the level of training he has received.
Dr Persaud is also an acknowledged grass-roots scientist. He meets with rice farmers in their paddy fields in his pursuit of broadening his knowledge about the farmers’ needs and in order to strengthen their resolve to do better. He is approachable and always willing to help. For every successful person there are sure to be detractors of some sort; no man has ever been able to please all humanity. When a country has people who are endowed with such scientific and technical skills, we must see such individuals as our future trail-blazers and an important asset.
I would like to implore Dr Mahendra to keep working on paddy strains that are drought tolerant and improve on varieties, as he did in the case of GRDB #10 ‒ it is very high yielding. But it goes down flat at harvesting time if the rain falls heavily. The best agronomic practice to avoid this disappointing situation is to strengthen the root base and stalk, while the leaves must be less prolific. GRDB #10 has been in very great demand among rice farmers countrywide.
I have harvested and used for paddy seedlings, plots that took a serious battering from the recent El Niño weather conditions. There were lots of unfilled paddy pads because of on-and-off water in the fields, but the results have been very good germination. The crop looks very promising.
Together we grow, together we eat, and together we survive!
Yours faithfully,
Ganga Persaud
