An Indian researcher who has helped feed more than one million people in Asia and Africa through new fish farming methods has been awarded the 2005 World Food Prize.

Dr Modadugu V Gupta, research coordinator for the Penang-based WorldFish Centre in Malaysia will receive a $250,000 prize in a ceremony on October 13 at the Iowa Capitol, officials announced on Friday.

Gupta, 65, a native of Bapatla, India, has worked for three decades to develop ways to use abandoned pools, roadside ditches and other small bodies of water to harvest fish for food and income, according to a statement from Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation.

"Through his dedicated and sustained efforts in Bangladesh, Laos and other countries in southeast Asia, Dr Gupta made small-scale aquaculture a viable means for over one million very poor farmers and women to improve their families' nutrition and well-being," Quinn said.

The prize was founded by Dr Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and recognises people who help improve the availability and quality of food throughout the world.

Dr Borlaug developed a wheat variety that helped fight starvation in India and Pakistan in the 1960s.

Read the rediff interview with Dr Norman Borlaug