Bishwajit Choudhury obtained his PhD degree (1954) from the University of Melbourne, Australia with specialization in agriculture-horticulture (vegetable crops). He was Joint Director (Research); Head, Division of Vegetable Crops & Floriculture, and Division of Horticulture; Chief Vegetable Specialist and Vegetable Breeder, all at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.

Academic and Research Achievements: Choudhury bred and released 28 new and high-quality vegetable varieties and hybrids. Many of them are widely grown in India. He identified sources of resistance to many important diseases, insects and root knot nematodes of several vegetables. He did seminal work on sex modification in cucurbits and reported, for the first time, the role of micronutrients in sex modification. He authored a book entitled Vegetables.

Other Contributions: Choudhury was an expert consultative Member of TAC, CGIAR for drafting a project for International Vegetable Research Institute for the Tropics (1976-77); and Consultant to FAO on the feasibility of vegetable seed production in the sultanate of Oman (1981). He served as Member of Editorial Board of Science Horticulture. He was Council Member of International Society of Horticultural Science (1974-86).

Awards and Honours: Choudhury received Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Prize of ICAR (1978); Borlaug Award (1979); AISMAN Award (1983); Dayawati Vira Medal (1984); FICCI Award (1985); and Watumull Foundation (Hawaii) Award (1989). He was a Fellow of National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad (1975); National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, New Delhi; Royal Horticultural Society; and Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding (1967). He was President, Agricultural Science Section of Indian Science Congress (1974).