GRANT'S DESI ACHIEVER

THE FRUITS OF HIS LABOUR

Grant’s Desi Achiever Dr Jayasankar Subramanian (left) with Dr Malcolm Campbell.

By SHAGORIKA EASWAR

While most children take a toy or a book to school for show-and-tell, Varsha and Dheiksha have taken a peach. A special peach, one developed by their father Jayasankar Subramanian.

The research scientist and professor of plant agriculture at the University of Guelph has developed new varieties of disease-resistant and cold-tolerant peaches, plums, nectarines and cherries.

“There’s a major difference in taste in peaches you find at most Toronto groceries and ones you’ll find in the peach growing region,” says Dr Subramanian, explaining the economics. “In the city, what you get has been shipped in cold storage from the US. As peaches have a short shelf life, you need staggered maturing times to last the season. Because in Canada, the growing and ripening season is also short, six to seven weeks at the most between July and September, fruits from the US come in before the local fruits can hit the grocery shelves. Our growers needed varieties that ripen early, but typically, problems like split-pit – where the seed is split and there might be some fungus growth on the seed – were common in the early-ripening varieties.”

Veeblush, the early variety developed by his team doesn’t split, has a beautiful red colour and is full of flavour and nurseries can’t grow enough to meet the demand.

“A fruit tree takes years to show results, unlike, say, growing tomatoes,” he explains. “The honeycrisp apples everyone is talking about were developed 38 years ago!”

The planned launch of a second variety of peach in April was postponed amid the coronavirus crisis.

Dr Subramanian, who has developed seven different varieties of plums including a dwarf plum suitable for urban or vertical farming, also helped develop an all-natural spray that reduces fruit spoilage, extending shelf life of fruits by as much as 50 per cent in some cases. He can’t take the credit, he insists, as it was a team effort. Hexanal was discovered by Professor Gopinadhan Paliyath (also a Grant’s Desi Achiever, August 2019), and he helped to take this product to the world.

“We worked together to take it from lab-to-land and beyond. To prove that it is profitable and doesn’t harm the environment.”

“It was successful because it was a collective process.”

In the first project, the spray was tested on sweet cherries and the results were beyond expectations. Around this time they received a call from International Development Research Centre (IDRC). They were looking at food security and for ways to implement good Canadian technology that could be implemented in the developing world. Initial work in India and Sri Lanka yielded what Dr Subramanian describes as “stunning results” in mango crops.

“We worked in collaboration with research students and the farmers, factoring in what their issues were, what they were looking for,” he says. “It was successful because it was a collective process.”

Earlier, growers were at the mercy of middlemen who forced them to sell at low prices. There was an urgency to sell or lose an entire harvest as they couldn’t pick the fruit fast enough before it fell to the ground. With fruit hanging on trees longer, they had the leeway to harvest over an extended period, they could wait for a fair price. Extensive studies on biosafety using five times more concentration than is used in fruits showed no adverse effects whatsoever. In fact, it showed beneficial effects. Earthworms in soil treated with hexanal were bigger. Farmers also reported seeing more beneficial insects like honeybees.

A longer shelf life also helps minimize trade deficits. Fruits that last longer can be exported. Dr Subramanian cites the example of the little yellow bananas desis are so fond of.

“We were lucky to spot some in desi grocery stores as mainstream grocers are all about shelf-life. Now with bananas that can last 50 days, you could send them to space and back! Take Alphonso mangoes from India. They spoil fast, and we’ve all seen people picking through six crates to make one crate. With fruit that lasts longer, there’s less spoilage and less waste and grocers would be more willing to stock them, thus increasing the export market for growers in other countries.”

There were unexpected benefits, too. With the time to harvest having become longer, women now had the window of opportunity to work together with other women and be part of the process.

“Women are talking to the scientists and providing very valid inputs, they are negotiating in the trade, making decisions about what the money is to be used for and overwhelmingly, they are opting to educate their children,” says Dr Subramanian. “When different scientists work together, new benefits emerge. It is surprising and so very gratifying.”

These projects were repeated in different forms in different regions with the same results. IDRC was very impressed and willing to scale up. Now there’s pressure from farmers in India to increase the usage and trials are underway or about to begin in Africa and the Caribbean where fruit spoilage is a major problem.

Climate change is also a factor. There are a few very old trees in the campus where he works that he refers to as “groundhogs of the tree industry” – their flowering is a good indicator of an early or late season. 

“If we see the same early – or late – start for four or five years in a row, then there’s a pattern based on which we can make predictions. The interesting thing is that while my predecessors some years ago might have dismissed a variety blooming 20 days early as an anomaly not worth keeping as a late frost could kill the blooms, now I keep an eye on them. In twenty or thirty years, these trees might be big players. Climate change is happening and we have to be prepared. You need the babies now to have adults later!”

Dr Subramanian worked as an assistant professor at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University after doing his Master’s there, and moved to the US in 1991 to do his PhD on a full scholarship. Hurricane Andrew flattened his home and lab in Florida, wiping out a year’s worth of plant cultures that he’d worked on. However, in spite of the setback, he finished his PhD ahead of schedule and went on to work as a post-doctoral fellow in Georgia where he developed a disease-resistant grape without genetic engineering. He was short-listed for a job, had applied for a green card and all was going well when 9/11 happened and all academic positions were frozen. He then applied to Guelph University, got a call within a week and after an initial hitch in which he had to apply to leave and re-enter the US as his green card application was pending, he joined the university in 2002.

“It’s destiny,” he says.

He used to play cricket and tennis at the university level in India, but now likes watching games when he is not watching nature documentaries.

Dr Jayasankar Subramanian, with his wife Sivagama Sikamani and daughters Dheiksha and Varsha.

His wife Sivagama Sikamani holds an MS in Horticulture. He describes the time she told their local grocer in St Catharines that he shouldn’t be spraying okra with water. “In Tamil Nadu, a mother-in-law tests a future daughter-in-law by asking her to cook okra,” he says with a laugh. “If the young woman adds water to the dish, she is written off as useless in the kitchen! Okra should be kept cool, but not cold and not sprayed with water as that results in a tougher vegetable with a rough skin. On our next visit, the grocer thanked her. Okra was staying fresh longer thanks to her tip and was moving very quickly off the shelves as a result.”

She is currently the secretary of the Niagara Hindu Samaj at Niagara Falls in Ontario. 

Dr Subramanian is equally proud of his daughters. Varsha is completing her MS in Food Sciences at UoG and working on a plant-based compound for a cancer cure, which she isolated during her high school years. Dheiksha is in grade 10 and has won several awards at the local, national and international levels for her STEM activities.

Oh, and those show-and-tells back at school? There were also class trips to their father’s research farms, one of which resulted in the naming of a new plum. Students would pick and eat any fruits that were ripe at the time and there was this boy who bit into a plum with red flesh. He was standing there with red juice dripping down his chin from both corners of his mouth, looking very vampire-like. And that’s how a new variety of plum came to be named Vampire!

A fun story, but how does the creator of fruit varieties feel about not having any named after him? Most of the varieties they’ve developed have names beginning with the letter V and he’s often asked when there’s going to be one named V-Jay.

“When I was younger, I might have enjoyed that,” he admits with a chuckle. “V-Jay – Vijay – means victory in Indian languages as you know and has a nice ring to it! But now, I’d much rather that my work was visible, not my name.”

He tells his students and newcomers who seek his advice to do whatever they are doing with a passion, not just for the sake of a job.

“To be fully involved in anything they commit to. I tell them how my wife berates me when I don’t complete a chore – you aren’t putting your 110 per cent into it, she says!”

He also tells them never to compare themselves – or their children – with others.

“Don’t do that. Every child can’t become a doctor or an engineer. Everyone has his or her own strengths, let them find theirs.”

Having people come up to him at a supermarket and say he may not remember them but they were in a tour of his and they really needed that particular variety of fruit is very rewarding, says Dr Subramanian.

That, and having students surge ahead because of the foundational work he did.

“When a student says, ‘I learnt that from Jay,’ that is an unbeatable feeling. Kids I mentored at science fairs have gone on to successful careers. They still come to see me and seek my blessings and I’m the one who feels blessed. Teaching allows you to help develop minds. If someone can look back at you and say what you did or said made a difference, what more can one ask for?”

• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).