Rao Bahadur Sir Tiruvadi Sambasiva Iyer Venkataraman[1][2] CIE, FNI, FASc (15 June 1884 – 18 January 1963) was an Indian botanist, agronomist and plant geneticist who specialised in the study and hybridisation of sugarcane.
After graduating from a secondary school in Tiruchirapalli, where he was a brilliant scholar, he enrolled at Presidency College, Madras, where he decided to study botany over zoology, as he strongly disliked dissecting insects and other animals.
[4] In the early 1900s, the extremely poor yields of Indian sugarcane varieties necessitated the import of sugar from the Netherlands East Indies, which was a heavy burden on the government exchequer.
According to Venkataraman's biographer and sole graduate student, J. Thuljaram Rao, the two scientists' observation of wild sugarcane (Saccharum spontaneum) growing near the Agricultural College campus inspired them to use it in their trials.
As sugarcane breeding was a new field of research, Venkataraman relied on meticulous planning and observation along with the pioneering of new techniques, including artificial induction of flowering through photoperiodic treatments, nobilization and outcrossing plants to improve their genetic diversity.
[4] Along with another variant, Co. 285, the new varieties were soon commercially marketed in the Punjab, where they also proved capable of being cultivated under stressed conditions, including in waterlogged fields.
[3] Following those successes, Venkataraman developed a tri-species hybrid by crossing S. spontaneum and S. officinarum with Saccharum barberi, a North Indian variety which Barber had researched.
[3] The hybrid cultivars, with a sugar content nearly 35 times that of their parent stocks, were soon recognised for being fast-maturing, for their ease of propagation and their resistance to waterlogging, drought and the red rot (Glomerella tucumanensis) and sereh diseases.
[4] In 1918, Venkataraman was promoted to full gazetted rank; he succeeded Barber as head of the Institute the following year, initially in an acting capacity while the British Indian government attempted to locate a European replacement to serve as director.
In the United States, Co. 281 and Co. 290 supported the sugar industry in Louisiana; Co. 281 also sustained production in South Africa and Cuba as it was readily adaptable and high-yielding even in poor soils and less forgiving climates.
Though the project was ultimately a commercial failure due to issues with sterility, his work subsequently helped inspire Janaki Ammal to develop a sugarcane-maize hybrid.
[3] In 1936, he attempted to develop a further intergeneric hybrid of sugarcane and the indigenous Bambusa arundinacea bamboo, intended to combine the height of the latter with the sugar percentage of the former.
The year of his retirement, a Current Science article observed "the breeding work carried out by Venkataraman – aided by ample tariff protection – has been responsible for converting India from an importer of white sugar (1 million tons) to a position where the future of the Indian industry is in urgent need of securing export markets."