Janaki Ammal was an Anglo-Indian botanist who lived from 1897-1984. She was most famous for her work on plant cytogenetics, specifically in sugarcane and eggplant. Dr. Janaki Ammal first received an honours degree in botany from the Presidency College and went on to get her masters in botany from the University of Michigan. She then taught as a professor in India for a few years before returning to the University of Michigan for her PhD. Janaki’s most prominent work occurred when she joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station in Coimbatore. At the time, the sweetest and best variety of sugarcane was found mainly in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia and was imported into India. She was successful in crossbreeding hybrids and altering the ploidy of the sugarcane species, creating a strain of an equally sweet Saccharum Spontaneum that was originally from India. Despite her success in these experiments, she faced discrimination due to her caste and gender from her coworkers, causing her to leave the Sugarcane Breeding Station. After leaving, Janaki was then invited by the Royal Horticultural Society to join their team and work as a cytologist, as the first salaried female staff member. Her chromosomal and ploidy studies and the book Chromosome Atlas of All Cultivated Plants she co-authored are still influential to botanists today. Janaki Ammal has multiple species named after her, most notably including a variety of magnolia shrub and a hybrid species of rose which can both be found in the gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pioneering-female-botanist-who-sweetened-nation-and-saved-valley-180972765/
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 