Vo Tong Xuan
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Dr. Vo Tong Xuan is the former rector of An Giang University (AGU). He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation[1].
He is known throughout southern Vietnam as Dr. Rice because of a popular television show that he ran that taught farmers different tactics for growing and cultivating rice. This was one of the reasons that Vietnam went from a net importer of rice to one of the world's largest rice exporters.
He was also instrumental in the eradication of the brown planthopper bug which, throughout the 1970s was destroying rice crops[2]. Part of the problem in eradicating the bug infestation was the type of collectivization imposes on the farmers of southern Vietnam. He helped to bring about reforms in the early 1980s that can be seen as catalysts to the doi moi reforms of 1986.
Vo Tong Xuan is also a research fellow and trustee of the International Rice Research Institute [3].
He has also been the recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding in 1993[4].
