Cultivators: Janaki Ammal

Womanica

Wonder Media Network and iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture, Education, History

4.3 • 920 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

E. K. Janaki Ammal (1897-1984) was a botanist and cytogenecist, referred to as India’s first woman botanist. She gained expertise in crossbreeding hybrid species of plants while studying at the University of Michigan, where she became the first Indian woman to earn a Ph.D in botany in the U.S. She is best known for her work to improve India’s native sugarcane, which led to India ending its imports of the crop and becoming independent. She went on to fight for the preservation of India’s indigenous plants and end deforestation as a part of the 1970s Save Silent Valley movement.

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0:00.0	I'm Soledad O'Brien, and on my new true crime podcast, Murder on the Tooth Path,
0:05.3	I'm taking it back to 1964 to the cold case of artist Mary Pinch O'Meyer.
0:11.5	She had been shot twice in the head and in the back.
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0:20.0	I pledge you that we shall neither commit nor provoke aggression.
0:24.4	John F. Kennedy.
0:26.3	Listen to Murder on the Toothpath with Soledad O'Brien on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
0:32.3	or wherever you get your podcast.
0:38.4	Hey, sis, it's Mandy Money from the Brown Ambition podcast. Are you wondering how am I going
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0:53.6	Ambition.
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1:04.3	I help women start building generational wealth to get the dose of empowerment, strategy, and community that only Brown Ambition can offer.
1:09.5	Listen to Brown Ambition on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:15.0	Hello, my name is Vanessa Handy.
1:21.0	I'm a producer at Wonder Media Network, and I'm so excited to be guest hosting this episode of Womanica.
1:29.1	This month, we're talking about cultivators, women who nurtured, cross-pollinated, experimented, or went to great lengths to better understand and protect the natural world.
1:34.6	In the 1930s, the global sugar trade was faltering, and nations worldwide were scrambling to
1:39.9	cement the sustainability of their sugarcane crops.
1:43.6	It was at this time that one woman swooped in to secure India's independence from a shaky
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