Back then, Swaminathan, a young scientist who turned down plumb positions in academia and the government to work in agriculture research, helped cross-breed wheat seeds that allowed India to more than treble its annual crop in just 15 years.

U.S. production has risen only about a third since then.Scientists in the Philippines had also developed a super strain of rice at the same time, and better irrigation and use of fertiliser helped pull India back from the brink of famine.

But Swaminathan says that some seeds of the current crisis were sown in his own revolutionary heyday.

"The Green Revolution created a sense of euphoria that we have solved our production problem. Now we have a plateau in production and productivity. We have a problem of under investment in rural infrastructure," he says.

With genetically advanced seeds, farmers overlooked the potential ecological damage of heavy fertiliser use, the drop in water tables due to heavier irrigation and the impact of repeated crop cycles on soil quality.

He believes we've learned from those lessons, and the next wave of improvements will have environmental considerations at their core, without the need to return to the genetics lab.

"A short-term gain will have to be a long-term disaster in agriculture," says Swaminathan, who held a series of leadership roles in world agriculture organisations before establishing his non-profit Chennai-based M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation 20 years ago to promote farm growth that will aid the poor, particularly women, and bio-diversity.

Photograph is for representational purposes only.

Photograph: stock.Xchange