The Wolf Prize in Agriculture has been awarded by the Wolf Foundation in Israel since 1978. 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
Year Name Nationality Citation 1978 George F. Sprague for his outstanding research on the genetic amelioration of maize for human welfare. John Charles Walker for his research in plant pathology, developing of disease-resistant varieties of major food plants. 1979 Jay L. Lush for his outstanding and pioneering contributions to the application of genetics to livestock improvement. Kenneth Blaxter for his fundamental contributions to the science and practice of ruminant nutrition and livestock production. 1980 Karl Maramorosch for his pioneering and wide-ranging studies on interactions between insects and disease agents in plants. 1981 John O. Almquist for his significant contributions to the application of artificial insemination to livestock improvement. Henry A. Lardy for his pioneering research on storage and preservation of spermatozoa thus enabling artificial insemination to become a universal practice. Glenn W. Salisbury for his outstanding achievements in basic and applied research on artificial insemination. 1982 Wendell L. Roelofs for his fundamental chemical and biological research on pheromones and their practical use in insect control. 1983/4 Don KirkhamCornelis T. de Wit 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 for his pioneering fundamental research on the mechanisms of biological nitrogen fixation and its application in crop production. 1986 Ralph RileyErnest R. Sears for their fundamental research in cytogenetics of wheat, providing the basis for genetic improvement of cereal grains. 1987 Theodor O. Diener for his discovery and pioneering fundamental research on viroids and his applied work on viroid detection in crops. 1988 Charles ThibaultErnest John Christopher Polge for pioneering work in reproductive physiology including cell preservation, fertilization processes, egg biology and embryo manipulations for domestic animal improvement. 1989 Peter M. BiggsMichael Elliott 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 for his pioneering work in genetic transformation of plants, thereby opening up new horizons in basic plant science and breeding. 1991 Shang Fa Yang / 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 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. HuffakerPerry Adkisson for their contributions to the development and implementation of environmentally beneficial integrated pest management systems for the protection of agricultural crops. 1995/6 Morris SchnitzerFrank J. Stevenson for their pioneering contributions to our understanding of the chemistry of soil organic matter and its application to agriculture. 1996/7 Neal L. First for his pioneering research in the reproductive biology of livestock. 1998 Ilan ChetBaldur R. Stefansson 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 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. BeachyJames E. Womack 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 RobertsFuller W. Bazer / 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 LongpingSteven D. Tanksley 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. PhillipsMichel A. J. Georges 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. PickettJames H. TumlinsonW. Joe Lewis 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 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 for highly significant discoveries that contribute to both fundamental and practical aspects of animal agriculture. R. James Cook for seminal discoveries in plant pathology and soil microbiology that impact crop productivity and disease management. 2012 No award — — 2013 Joachim Messing / for innovations in recombinant DNA cloning, which revolutionized agriculture, and for deciphering the genetic codes of crop plants. Jared Diamond 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 DubcovskyLeif Andersson / for their breakthrough contribution to the study of plants and animals through the use of cutting-edge genomic technologies. 2015 Linda J. Saif 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 for her work in quantitative genetics, which studies the interaction between genes, traits and environmental effects. 2017 No award — — 2018 Gene E. Robinson for leading the genomics revolution in the organismal and population biology of the honeybee. 2019 David Zilberman for incorporating biophysical features of agroeconomic systems to develop economic models and econometric decision-making frameworks to answer fundamental agricultural economic and policy questions. 2020 Caroline Dean for pioneering discoveries in flowering time control and epigenetic basis of vernalization. 2021 No award — — 2022 Pamela C. Ronald for pioneering work on disease resistance and environmental stress tolerance in rice. 2023 Martinus Theodorus van Genuchten / for his groundbreaking work in understanding water flow and predicting contaminant transport in soils. 2024 Joanne ChoryElliot M. MeyerowitzVenkatesan Sundaresan / for key discoveries on plant developmental biology of relevance to crop improvement. 2025 Jeffery L. DanglJonathan D. G. JonesBrian J. Staskawicz for groundbreaking discoveries of the immune system and disease resistance in plants. 2026 No award — —
By country
Below is a chart of all laureates by country (updated to 2025). Some with several countries are counted several times.
Country Number of laureates 41 10 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
See also
List of agriculture awards
Notes and references
External links
Wolf Prize in Agriculture laureates at the Wolf Foundation The Wolf Prize at the Wolf Foundation