Wolf Prize in Agriculture

Template:Short description 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.

Laureates

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Year	Name	Nationality	Citation
1978	George F. Sprague	Template:USA	for his outstanding research on the genetic amelioration of maize for human welfare.
	John Charles Walker	Template:USA	for his research in plant pathology, developing of disease-resistant varieties of major food plants.
1979	Jay L. Lush	Template:USA	for his outstanding and pioneering contributions to the application of genetics to livestock improvement;
	Kenneth Blaxter	Template:GBR	for his fundamental contributions to the science and practice of ruminant nutrition and livestock production.
1980	Karl Maramorosch	Template:USA	for his pioneering and wide-ranging studies on interactions between insects and disease agents in plants.
1981	John O. Almquist	Template:USA	for his significant contributions to the application of artificial insemination to livestock improvement.
	Henry A. Lardy	Template:USA	for his pioneering research on storage and preservation of spermatozoa thus enabling artificial insemination to become a universal practice.
	Glenn W. Salisbury	Template:USA	for his outstanding achievements in basic and applied research on artificial insemination.
1982	Wendell L. Roelofs	Template:USA	for his fundamental chemical and biological research on pheromones and their practical use in insect control.
1983/4	Don Kirkham Cornelis T. de Wit	Template:USA Template:NED	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	Template:USA	for his pioneering fundamental research on the mechanisms of biological nitrogen fixation and its application in crop production.
1986	Ralph Riley Ernest R. Sears	Template:GBR Template:USA	for their fundamental research in cytogenetics of wheat, providing the basis for genetic improvement of cereal grains.
1987	Theodor O. Diener	Template:USA	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	Template:FRA; Template:GBR	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	Template:GBR Template:GBR	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	Template:BEL	for his pioneering work in genetic transformation of plants, thereby opening up new horizons in basic plant science and breeding.
1991	Shang Fa Yang	Template:Flag / Template:USA	for his remarkable contributions to the understanding of the mechanism of biosynthesis, mode of action and applications of the plant hormone, Ethylene.
1992	No award
1993	John E. Casida	Template:USA	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	Template:USA Template:USA	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	Template:CAN Template:USA	for their pioneering contributions to our understanding of the chemistry of soil organic matter and its application to agriculture.
1996/7	Neal L. First	Template:USA	for his pioneering research in the reproductive biology of livestock.
1998	Ilan Chet Baldur R. Stefansson	Template:ISR Template:CAN	for their contributions to the environmentally safe development of world agriculture through innovative approaches in breeding and bio-control.
1999	No award
2000	Gurdev Khush	{{#invoke:flag	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	Template:USA Template:USA	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	Template:GBR / Template:USA; Template:USA	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	Template:CHN Template:USA	for innovative development of hybrid rice and discovery of the genetic basis of heterosis in this important food staple.
2005	No award
2006/7	Ronald L. Phillips Michel A. J. Georges	Template:USA Template:BEL	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	Template:GBR Template:USA Template:USA	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.
2009	No award
2010	David Baulcombe	Template:GBR	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	Template:USA	for highly significant discoveries, that contribute to both fundamental and practical aspects of animal agriculture.
	R. James Cook	Template:USA	for seminal discoveries in plant pathology and soil microbiology that impact crop productivity and disease management.
2012	No award
2013	Joachim Messing	Template:GER / Template:USA	for innovations in recombinant DNA cloning, which revolutionized agriculture, and for deciphering the genetic codes of crop plants.
	Jared Diamond	Template:USA	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	Template:USA Template:SWE	for their break-through contribution to the study of plants and animals, through the use of cutting-edge genomic technologies.
2015	Linda J. Saif	Template:USA	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	Template:USA	for her work in quantitative genetics, which studies the interaction between genes, traits and environmental effects.
2017	No award
2018	Gene E. Robinson	Template:USA	for leading the genomics revolution in the organismal and population biology of the honeybee.
2019	David Zilberman	Template:USA	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2020	Caroline Dean	Template:UK	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2021	No award
2022	Pamela C. Ronald	Template:USA	for pioneering work on disease resistance and environmental stress tolerance in rice.<ref>פברואר 2022 - קרן וולף Template:Webarchive</ref>
2023	Martinus Theodore van Genuchten	Template:BRA	citation	CitationClass=web }}</ref>
2024	Joanne Chory Elliot M. Meyerowitz Venkatesan Sundaresan	Template:USA; Template:USA; {{#invoke:flag	India}} / Template:USA	for key discoveries on plant developmental biology of relevance to crop improvement.<ref>Laureates Agriculture 2024</ref>
2025	Jeffery L. Dangl Jonathan D. G. Jones Brian J. Staskawicz	Template:USA; Template:UK; Template:USA	for groundbreaking discoveries of the immune system and disease resistance in plants.<ref>Laureates 2025</ref>

By country

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

Country	Number of laureates
Template:Flag	41
Template:Flag	10
Template:Flag	2
Template:Flag	2
Template:Flag	2
Template:Flag	1
Template:Flag	1
Template:BRA	1
Template:Flag	1
Template:Flag	1
Template:Flag	1
Template:Flag	1
Template:Flag	1

See also

• List of agriculture awards

External links

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• Wolf Prizes 2015
• Wolf Prizes 2016
• Wolf Prizes 2018
• Wolf Prizes 2019

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