I had the privilege of knowing and working with Norman Borlaug - who has been aptly described by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as the greatest hunger fighter of our time - for nearly 50 years.
And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy.
Agricultural science is largely the contest between emerging pests and the emerging methods of their control.
I don't think that you can possibly embrace the kind of joy which one who has worked with plants and plant structures such as I have over a period of nearly 40 years, how wonderful the plant laboratory seems.
I have to keep up with the scientific literature as part of my job, but increasingly I found myself reading things that weren't really relevant to my academic work, but were relevant to gardening.
Some bioengineering is good, especially if it results in plants that are more drought-resistant or perennial food crops.
I am not a farmer; I am a researcher who studies the plants that come to your dinner table, which means that I ask questions for a living.
A theoretical grounding in agronomy must, therefore, include knowledge of biological laws.
I thought I'd love to be a gardener because I grew up with a vegetable garden and I love being close to the Earth and growing things. At my home in L.A., I have a great garden and I grow all kinds of things. I even have a worm farm! The worms help create organic compost out of kitchen scraps.
It is hard to overstate how valuable it is to have all the incredible tools that are used for human disease to study plants.
In essence, the science of agronomy is inseparable from biology.
I learnt about plants from my father, who was a herbalist and an amateur microscopist.
