Gupta, who hails from Bapatla town in Andhra Pradesh, recently retired as assistant director general at WorldFish, an international fisheries research institute under the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research based at Penang in Malaysia.
According to the director general of International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics and chairman of the executive of the Future Harvest Alliance of the CGIAR, William Dar, the recognition to Gupta is further acknowledgment of the 15 international agricultural research institutes under CGIAR in improving global food production for alleviating poverty.
As a result of Gupta's efforts, Icrisat stated, freshwater fish production has risen dramatically by 3 to 5 times in Bangladesh, Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia.
Various methods of fish farming, which Gupta developed, not only cost less but also causes no environmental damage.
As a result, landless farmers and poor women have turned a million abandoned pools, roadside ditches, seasonally flooded fields and other bodies of water into fish ponds for food and income.
Gupta is the sixth citizen from India to receive the World Food Prize since it was established in 1986.
Previous recipients include M S Swaminathan, 1987, Verghese Kurien, 1989, Gurdev Khush, 1996, BR Barwale, 1998 and Surinder K Vasal, 2000.
The World Food Prize will be formally presented to him at a ceremony on Oct 13, 2005, in the Iowa State Capitol Building in Des Moines, USA.
