JK Ladha

J.K. Ladha is a Principal Scientist and the IRRI representative for India and Nepal. He is also an adjunct associate in the Ag Station at the UC-Davis. He devoted more than 30 years to aspects of sustainable management of agriculture and natural resources for increasing food security and environmental quality. He provided leadership to the R-W Consortium (RWC, an Eco-regional Initiative of the CGIAR that aims to enhance the productivity of rice and wheat in South Asia).

Dr. Ladha’s work, in collaboration with many national partners, takes a holistic, systems approach, covering various components of agronomic, soil and water management. Through his work, several integrated crop and resource management technologies have been adopted on a large scale helping resource-poor farmers. His leadership has been instrumental in bringing closer collaboration among several international centers and national agricultural research and extension systems in South Asia.

Dr. Ladha has published widely on issues related to sustainable and conservation agriculture. He has (co)authored 190 research articles in international journals, (co)edited 13 books, and presented 80 invited papers in 28 countries. Dr Ladha enjoys exceptionally high h-index for citations (Google Scholar, 55; Web of Science, 40; Scopus, 37) and his top three rank in the whole CGIAR system. He served on the editorial boards of several international journals including the Regional Editor of Biology and Fertility of Soils. He has been involved with several international advisory/scientific review panels. He supervised 35 master’s and doctoral students from a dozen countries.

He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Society of Agronomy (ASA) and the Soil Science Society of America (SSA), Indian Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) and an associate member of the Philippine Council of Agricultural Research (PARC). He is the recipient of several awards and honors most recently, the International Service in Agronomy Award 2011,  International Soil Science Award 2010, International Plant Nutrition Institute Science Award 2009 and “Frosty” Hill Fellowship Award by Cornell University in 2007. In 2000 and 2004, the CGIAR awarded the Chairman’s Excellence Science Award for Outstanding Scientific Partnership and the prestigious King Baudoin Award for Outstanding Research to the Rice-Wheat Consortium in which J. K. Ladha was the key scientist and IRRI’s coordinator.