Janaki Ammal (1897-1984) Dr. Janaki Ammal Edavalath Kakkat (4 November 1897 – 7 February 1984) was an Indian botanist who worked on plant breeding, cytogenetics and phytogeography
Janaki did her primary schooling in Thalassery and followed by Queen Mary's College in Madras. She obtained an Honours degree in Botany from the Presidency College and then moved to the University of Michigan in 1924, obtaining a masters degree in botany in 1926 with a Scholarship. She obtained a PhD degree in 1931.
She was invited to work as a cytologist at the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley from 1945 to 1951. During this period, she studied Magnolia plants, their cytogenetics and conducted experiment on their breeding. To this day, in the Society’s campus at Wisley there are magnolia shrubs she planted and among them is a variety with small white flowers named after her: Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.
The Indian government invited her to reorganize the Botanical Survey of India, and she was appointed as the first director of the Central Botanical Laboratory at Allahabad. From 1962, she served as an officer on special duty at Regional Research Laboratory in Jammu. She also worked briefly at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Trombay and then settled down in Madras in November 1970, working as an Emeritus Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) in Botany, University of Madras.
As an expert in cytogenetics, she joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station at Coimbatore to work on sugarcane biology. Dr. Janaki was able to create a high yielding strain of the sugarcane that would thrive in Indian conditions. And thus made it possible for India to produce sugarcane in large quantities.
When you add a spoonful of sugar to your milk, produced by an Indian sugarcane farmer, remember it was Dr. Janaki Ammal who made that possible.
With her dedicated scientific research, she also developed many different varieties of brinjal plant.
She was instrumental in restructuring Calcutta's Botanical Survey of India in 1951 on the request of then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She was awarded a Padma Shri by the Indian government in 1977.