The Board of Directors of “Niigata International Food Award Foundation “selected the 3rd winners of the prize.

○Main Prize: Tatsushi Tsuboi

National Crops Resource Research Institute (Uganda)
JICA Expert / Senior Adviser for Rice Farming Technology(Japan)

Reason of Award

Achievement: Development and promotion of “Rice Farming Technology”in Africa.
Over the 30 years, he has been involved in leadership of rice cultivation technology in developing countries of Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
First half, he coached on rice cultivation technology around the Asian countries.
After that, to carrying out the activities of Africa, starting with Ivory Coast, focusing on potential dry-land rice (NERICA), which was developed in the mid-1990s, since 2004, he is working to spread and test research for the NERICA “NEw RICe for Africa” promotion in Uganda.
Farmers and agricultural stakeholders in Uganda which benefited through his technical guidance amounted to 14 thousand people or more.
He is a global authority of the technical development of a rice crop in Africa, and when international society including Japan tackles rice crop promotion in Africa, continuing to play a core role is expected.

○Sano Tozaburo Special Prize: C.L. Laxmipathi Gowda

International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT)
Deputy Director for General-Research （India）

Reason for Award

Achievement: Development and diffusion of cultivation technology of chickpea.
Over the past 37 years, with focusing on anti-wilt, high yield, and anti-psyllium, Dr. Gowda has been involved in research and development of improved chickpea.
He and his team developed an advanced variety series and supplied them to the breeders of more than 30 countries around the world.
On the basis of this kind material, scientists of 10 developing countries, were able to develop a high-yield varieties of 68 kinds.
Many of these varieties remarkably contributed to increase farmers’income and nations’ GDP.

○21Century’s Hope Award: Hiroyuki Nakai

Applied Biological Chemistry Department, Agriculture Faculty, Niigata University（Japan）

Reason of Award

Achievement: Development of manufacturing technology of functional oligosaccharide.
Although various oligosaccharide exists in the nature and the each has original functionality and convenience, since it is very difficult to produce the each single oligosaccharide which is rich in diversity for bulk preparation, the only small quantity of them can be used in industries now.
With the help of glucose-related enzymes which exist in the nature named phosphorylase as a safe biological catalyst, he greatly expanded (more than 200 kinds) the variation of beneficial oligosaccharide for health maintenance of human beings.
And he also succeeded in developing a Low-cost innovative general-purpose manufacturing technology through high-yield conversion to functional oligosaccharide from vegetable or marine biomass.

We express our deep gratitude to many nominators and generous supporters.