Hank Beachell, noted rice breeder, dies at 100

Dr. Henry (Hank) Beachell - a 1996 World Food Prize winner who developed a high-yielding rice variety that fed the malnourished and poverty-stricken - died Dec. 13. He was 100.

Beachell was a retired Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researcher. He was best known for improving a rice variety used as a genetic base for most of today's varieties. Because of this, he was dubbed as the person most responsible for the "Green Revolution" in rice.

Dr. Ed Runge, professor and former head of the soil and crop sciences department at Texas A&M University, said Beachell "was the person most responsible for development and distribution of the high-yielding, short-statured rice varieties adopted throughout the world. And in particular Asia, beginning with IR 8 in 1966, and he's fondly known as the father of short-statured stiff straw, high-yielding semi-dward varieties."

Beachell shared the World Food Prize award with Dr. Gurdev Singh Khush, who began working with him at the International Rice Research Institute in 1967. In 1987, Beachell received the Japan Prize of the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan.

Beachell was a joint employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Station during his career. He worked at the Beaumont station - now the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Beaumont - from 1932 to 1963. While at Beaumont, he helped introduce nine rice varieties, which eventually counted for more than 90 percent of U.S. long-grain rice production.

He also took part in research and teaching tours of rice production areas in India, Central and South America.

After retiring from his research position in at Beaumont in 1963, he accepted a position at the rice institute in the Philippines. While there, he helped discover the IR8 rice variety released in 1966. The variety set yield records ranging from 6 tons to 8 tons of grain per hectare (per 100 acres) on experimental fields in several Asian countries, more than doubling previous yields.

- Texas A&M Press Release