Today's Crossword: Meet Janaki Ammal, India's champion for plants and conservation

In 1970, when the Indian government planned to flood 8.3 square kilometres of tropical forest in Kerala and replace it with a hydroelectric plant, a pioneering female botanist led the charge to stop it from happening.

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Thanks to Janaki Ammal, who was 80 years old at the time, Silent Valley National Park still stands today, as one of the country’s last forestlands, brimming with animal life, and nearly 1,000 species of native flowering plants.

Often called India’s first woman botanist, Ammal, who was born in Thalassery, Kerala, in 1897, was the 10th child in a blended family. She grew up to become an expert in plant cytology – the study of genetic composition and gene expression in plants – and an advocate for the preservation of India’s indigenous plants. Today, she has a delicate white magnolia and a newly developed yellow rose hybrid named after her.

According to the Smithsonian magazine, the official journal published by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, US, Ammal studied and taught in India before she received the opportunity to study abroad for free through the Barbour Scholarship, established at the US-based University of Michigan. Ammal accepted, and headed to Michigan in 1924. But despite being a prestigious scholarship awardee, she was detained on Ellis Island until her immigration status was cleared, like other travellers entering the country from the east. While there, Ammal was mistaken for an Indian princess, with her long, dark hair and exquisitely crafted traditional dresses, made from Indian silks – so, she was let through. Years later, when asked how she reacted in that situation, she said: “I did not deny it.”

Among Ammal's list of achievements, is the fact that she is responsible for bolstering India’s sugarcane production. At the time, India imported the sweetest species of sugarcane from the island of Java, Indonesia. Ammal used her expertise, and with consistent research and experimentation, created Saccharum hybrids that yielded a much higher sucrose content than the regular Indian variety. India adopted the hybrids and soon gained the ability to produce sweet sugarcane independently. Today, it's one of the country's most important cash crops, according to global statistics website, Statista.

But perhaps Ammal's best-known work, is a five-year collaboration with English eugenicist Cyril Dean Darlington, which produced a book called Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants. It still remains an important resource for botanists today, as it is a record of the chromosome number of about 100,000 plants.

Ammal then went on to champion the preservation of indigenous plant flora in India, tirelessly advocating for Nature over destructive commercialisation.

From the enduring biodiversity of Silent Valley to the sweetness of India’s sugarcane, to blooming yellow-petaled magnolias, Ammal’s work endures decades after her death in 1984, as a testament to her love for the vibrant world of botany.

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