Wolf Prize in Agriculture

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The Wolf Prize in Agriculture is awarded annually since 1978 by the Wolf Foundation in Israel. It is one of the six Wolf Prizes, alongside those for chemistry, mathematics, medicine, physics and arts. It is sometimes unofficially called a Nobel Prize in Agriculture.

Contents

Laureates

[1]

YearNameNationalityCitation
1978 George F. Sprague Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his outstanding research on the genetic amelioration of maize for human welfare.
John Charles Walker Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his research in plant pathology, developing of disease-resistant varieties of major food plants.
1979 Jay L. Lush Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his outstanding and pioneering contributions to the application of genetics to livestock improvement;
Kenneth Blaxter Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom for his fundamental contributions to the science and practice of ruminant nutrition and livestock production.
1980 Karl Maramorosch Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his pioneering and wide-ranging studies on interactions between insects and disease agents in plants.
1981 John O. Almquist Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his significant contributions to the application of artificial insemination to livestock improvement.
Henry A. Lardy Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his pioneering research on storage and preservation of spermatozoa thus enabling artificial insemination to become a universal practice.
Glenn W. Salisbury Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his outstanding achievements in basic and applied research on artificial insemination.
1982 Wendell L. Roelofs Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his fundamental chemical and biological research on pheromones and their practical use in insect control.
1983/4 Don Kirkham
Cornelis T. de Wit
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of the Netherlands.svg  Netherlands
for their innovative contributions to the quantitative understanding of soil-water and other environmental interactions influencing crop growth and yield.
1984/5 Robert H. Burris Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his pioneering fundamental research on the mechanisms of biological nitrogen fixation and its application in crop production.
1986 Ralph Riley
Ernest R. Sears
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for their fundamental research in cytogenetics of wheat, providing the basis for genetic improvement of cereal grains.
1987 Theodor O. Diener Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his discovery and pioneering fundamental research on viroids and his applied work on viroid detection in crops.
1988 Charles Thibault
Ernest John Christopher Polge
Flag of France.svg  France;
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom
for pioneering work in reproductive physiology including cell preservation, fertilization processes, egg biology and embryo manipulations for domestic animal improvement.
1989 Peter M. Biggs
Michael Elliott
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom
for distinguished contributions to basic science and its successful translation into practice in the fields of animal health and crop protection.
1990 Jozef Stefaan Schell Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium for his pioneering work in genetic transformation of plants, thereby opening up new horizons in basic plant science and breeding.
1991 Shang Fa Yang Flag of the Republic of China.svg  Taiwan / Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his remarkable contributions to the understanding of the mechanism of biosynthesis, mode of action and applications of the plant hormone, Ethylene.
1992No award
1993 John E. Casida Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his pioneering studies on the mode of action of insecticides, design of safer pesticides and contributions to the understanding of nerve and muscle function in insects.
1994/5 Carl B. Huffaker
Perry Adkisson
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for their contributions to the development and implementation of environmentally beneficial integrated pest management systems for the protection of agricultural crops.
1995/6 Morris Schnitzer
Frank J. Stevenson
Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for their pioneering contributions to our understanding of the chemistry of soil organic matter and its application to agriculture.
1996/7 Neal L. First Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for his pioneering research in the reproductive biology of livestock.
1998 Ilan Chet
Baldur R. Stefansson
Flag of Israel.svg  Israel
Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada
for their contributions to the environmentally safe development of world agriculture through innovative approaches in breeding and bio-control.
1999No award
2000 Gurdev Khush Flag of India.svg  India for his extraordinary contribution to theoretical research in plant genetics, evolution and breeding especially of rice, with regard to food production and alleviation of hunger.
2001 Roger N. Beachy
James E. Womack
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for the use of recombinant DNA technology, to revolutionize plant and animal sciences, paving the way for applications to neighboring fields.
2002/3 R. Michael Roberts
Fuller W. Bazer
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom / Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States;
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for discoveries of Interferon tau and other pregnancy-associated proteins, which clarified the biological mystery of signaling between embryo and mother to maintain pregnancy, with profound effects on the efficiency of animal production systems, as well as human health and well-being.
2004 Yuan Longping
Steven D. Tanksley
Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg  China
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for innovative development of hybrid rice and discovery of the genetic basis of heterosis in this important food staple.
2005No award
2006/7 Ronald L. Phillips
Michel A. J. Georges
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium
for groundbreaking discoveries in genetics and genomics, laying the foundations for improvements in crop and livestock breeding, and sparking important advances in plant and animal sciences.
2008 John A. Pickett
James H. Tumlinson
W. Joe Lewis
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for their remarkable discoveries of mechanisms governing plant-insect and plant-plant interactions. Their scientific contributions on chemical ecology have fostered the development of integrated pest management and significantly advanced agricultural sustainability.
2009No award
2010 David Baulcombe Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom for his pioneering discovery of gene regulation by small inhibitory RNA molecules in plants, which is of profound importance not only for agriculture, but also for biology as a whole, including the field of medicine.
2011 Harris A. Lewin Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for highly significant discoveries, that contribute to both fundamental and practical aspects of animal agriculture.
R. James Cook Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for seminal discoveries in plant pathology and soil microbiology that impact crop productivity and disease management.
2012No award
2013 Joachim Messing Flag of Germany.svg  Germany / Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for innovations in recombinant DNA cloning, which revolutionized agriculture, and for deciphering the genetic codes of crop plants.
Jared Diamond Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for pioneering theories of crop domestication, the rise of agriculture and its influences on the development and demise of human societies, and its impact on the ecology of the environment.
2014 Jorge Dubcovsky
Leif Andersson
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
Flag of Sweden.svg  Sweden
for their break-through contribution to the study of plants and animals, through the use of cutting-edge genomic technologies.
2015 Linda J. Saif Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for her discoveries of novel enteric and respiratory viruses of food animals and humans which have led to her extensive contributions of fundamental knowledge of the gut-mammary immunologic axis and have provided new ways to design vaccines and vaccination strategies.
2016 Trudy Mackay Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for her work in quantitative genetics, which studies the interaction between genes, traits and environmental effects.
2017No award
2018 Gene E. Robinson Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for leading the genomics revolution in the organismal and population biology of the honeybee.
2019 David Zilberman Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for incorporating biophysical features of agroeconomic systems to develop economic models and econometric decision-making frameworks to answer fundamental agricultural economic and policy questions in several important areas. [2]
2020 Caroline Dean Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom for pioneering discoveries in flowering time control and epigenetic basis of vernalization. [3]
2021No award
2022 Pamela C. Ronald Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States for pioneering work on disease resistance and environmental stress tolerance in rice. [4]
2023 Martinus Theodore van Genuchten Flag of Brazil.svg  Brazil for his groundbreaking work in understanding water flow and predicting contaminant transport in soils. [5]
2024 Joanne Chory
Elliot M. Meyerowitz
Venkatesan Sundaresan
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States;
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States;
Flag of India.svg  India / Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for key discoveries on plant developmental biology of relevance to crop improvement. [6]
2025 Jeffery L. Dangl
Jonathan D. G. Jones
Brian J. Staskawicz
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States;
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom;
Flag of the United States (23px).png  United States
for groundbreaking discoveries of the immune system and disease resistance in plants. [7]

By country

Below is a chart of all laureates by country (updated to 2025). Some with several citizenships are counted several times.

CountryNumber of laureates
Flag of the United States.svg  United States 41
Flag of the United Kingdom.svg  United Kingdom 10
Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 2
Flag of Belgium (civil).svg  Belgium 2
Flag of India.svg  India 2
Flag of Israel.svg  Israel 1
Flag of the People's Republic of China.svg  China 1
Flag of Brazil.svg  Brazil 1
Flag of Germany.svg  Germany 1
Flag of France.svg  France 1
Flag of the Republic of China.svg  Taiwan 1
Flag of the Netherlands.svg  Netherlands 1
Flag of Sweden.svg  Sweden 1

See also

Notes and references

  1. "Wolf Prize Recipients in Agriculture". Archived from the original on 2016-09-24. Retrieved 2012-03-08.
  2. "Wolf Prize 2019 - Agriculture". Archived from the original on 2019-03-24. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  3. "Wolf Prize 2020". Archived from the original on 2020-01-12. Retrieved 2020-01-13.
  4. פברואר 2022 - קרן וולף Archived 2023-02-07 at the Wayback Machine
  5. "Wolf Prize 2023". Archived from the original on 2023-02-07. Retrieved 2023-02-07.
  6. Laureates Agriculture 2024
  7. Laureates 2025