(Msc) Indian Agricultural Research Institute Rattan Lal (born 5 September 1944) is an Indian-American soil scientist.
His work focuses on regenerative agriculture through which soil can help resolve global issues such as climate change, food security and water quality.
Rattan Lal was born in 1944 in the Punjab region of British India where his family were subsistence farmers on 9 acres of farmland.
[5] Lal worked as a senior research fellow with the University of Sydney from 1968 to 1969, and then as a soil physicist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria, from 1970 to 1987.
[6] While in Nigeria, Lal discovered that organic carbon and other nutrients disappeared after deforestation and his research centered on mulching, cover crops and no-till farming to bring back the soil components.
Lal has received Doctor of Science and Honoris Causa degrees from nine universities globally, including India, Norway, Moldova, Germany, and Spain.
[16] Lal was ranked #1 in Agronomy and Agriculture, Environmental Sciences, and at The Ohio State University; #34 Globally for the year 2020 and #73 Globally for career from 1973-2020 among the top 2% of scientists (out of total 8 million scientists) in peer-reviewed research article "A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field" by Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis of Stanford University (2019,[17] 2020,[18] 2021[19]).