For centuries, India had imported sugar from Southeast Asia and other areas with climates more conducive to sugarcane growth. It was not until the 1930s that the country’s Sugarcane Breeding Station successfully created a sugarcane plant that could thrive in India, all thanks to station researcher Edavelth Kakkat Janaki Ammal, the first Indian woman to receive a Doctor of Science degree in botany in the United States. A life defined by groundbreaking research and environmental advocacy, read Ammal’s story in this edition of It Happened at Michigan.
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