<p>National Agricultural Research System (NARS) of India comprising Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) is entrusted with development of high yielding, high quality and climate resilient varieties suited to different agro climatic conditions of the country along with matching production and protection technologies has taken several initiatives through its 26 and 30 commodity/theme based research institutes and crop specific All India Coordinated Research Projects (AICRPs) and All India Network Projects &nbsp;to enhance productivity of different crops. The present paper discusses the genesis of AICRPs in field crops, their organization set up and operation, variety release &amp; notification mechanisms, outputs and outcomes. Multi-disciplinary and multi-location approach and success of first All India Coordinated Maize Improvement Project established in 1957, led to establishment of 21 crop based All India Coordinated Crop Improvement Projects (AICCIPs) and 2 All India Network&nbsp;&nbsp; Projects (AINPs) beginning with wheat (1961) and rice (1965). Later on, AICCIP was rechristened as All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP). The AICRPs served as platform for analysing G x E interaction leading to identification of stable potential genotypes and played an important role in the development of 4,365 varieties of field crops along with efficient crop management technologies suitable for diverse agro-climatic conditions. Of these, during XII plan (2012-16), 698 varieties comprising 396 of cereals, 108 of oilseeds, 91 of pulses, 49 of fibres, 31 of forages&nbsp; and 23 of sugarcane were developed. Development of high yielding, stress (biotic and abiotic) tolerant, location specific varieties with matching production/protection technologies, enhanced availability of quality seed, their adoption coupled with enabling policies, excellent service support and innovative farmers resulted into spectacular increase in cereals, pulses and oilseeds production since the inception of AICRPs and Value for Cultivation and Use<strong> (</strong>VCU). Food production rose from 69.86 million tonnes (1956-57) to 252.22 million tonnes (2015-16) and oilseed production from 8.56 million tonnes (1965) to 25.9 million tonnes (2015-16), increase was 261 % and 202.5%, respectively, a testimony to the spectacular success of AICRPs and VCU system in India.</p>


<p>All India Coordinated Research Projects and Value for Cultivation and Use in field crops in India: Genesis, Outputs and Outcomes&nbsp;</p>


<div><strong>Background:</strong> River water is an indispensable natural resource supporting economic and social development. River has largely been exploited for supplying water for human consumption, livestock drinking, irrigation and other purposes. Despite these benefits, in developing countries, rivers are subjected to various anthropogenic and natural sources of pollution. Hence, the present study aimed to capture farmers&rsquo; perception of river water contamination and its impact on farm productivity and human health.<br />
<br />
<strong>Methods:</strong> A comprehensive field survey was carried out in the villages of Maharajganj district of Eastern Uttar Pradesh, India from 1 September to 30 September 2021. One control village (polluted) and one uncontrolled (non-polluted) village were selected using a multistage sampling technique. In totality, 1 state, 1 district, 1 Tehsil, 1 Development Block, 2 villages and 100 samples were selected.<br />
<br />
<strong>Result:</strong> The results from the study show that farmers are well aware of river water contamination. Hence, the present study recommends the following policy measures. First, a necessity for proper policy, training, and more information on health precautions as well as on food safety in using contaminated river water. Second, when formulating relevant measures, differentiated should be taken for different groups of farmers. Lastly farmers with high dependence on cultivated land may need the most attention.</div>


<p>Farmer&rsquo;s Perception of River Water contamination in India: A Case study of Rohini River in Maharajganj, India</p>


<div>India ranks second after China in vegetable production in the world. Vegetable transplantation is labor-intensive due to the requirement of transplanting practices. This makes it necessary to adapt the mechanization for vegetable transplantation to save money and time and increase the productivity to fulfill the food requirement of a huge population. In India, vegetables are grown in small plots. The research paper on the design development and performance evaluation of the various manual vegetable transplanters, semi-automatic vegetable transplanters, automatic vegetable transplanters are studied for the purpose to find out the most useful vegetable transplanter in Indian conditions. As per the land use pattern in India, the small and economical vegetable transplanters are beneficial. The articles in this section discuss vegetable transplanters and advances in vegetable transplanting technology used in India.</div>


<p>Vegetable Transplanters for India: A Review</p>


<div>Transboundary animal diseases (TADs) are a serious threat to food security and human health. North-East India shares international borders with five countries that include China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Bhutan. Geographical locations and climatic conditions of North East India with respect to other parts of India are different. Although this part of the country is well known for its natural beauty, customs and unique cultures but the porous international borders made it highly prone to TADs. The porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in pigs is believed to be entered in Mizoram, India from Myanmar. The recent outbreaks of African swine fever (ASF) in India are also initiated in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam and originated from China. The vulnerability of this region to be a potential entry point for TADs, which might have potential zoonotic value, warrants a critical review of the border situation of NER India. The current review emphasizes on awareness about TADs and the factors responsible for their emergence.</div>


<p>Transboundary Animal Diseases in the Perspective of North East India: A Review</p>


<div style="text-align: justify;">Gum guar is an economically important pulse crop of Indian economy. Keeping the importance of gum guar production in to consideration the present study was undertaken to investigate the growth in gum guar area, production and productivity in India and along with peeping into the export trends of gum guar production from India. In order to fulfill the objectives of the study, secondary data on gum guar area, production, productivity and export scenario were obtained from various sources for India. The results of the study brought out that the total gum guar area, production and productivity of gum guar in India is positive with 5.30, 10.87 and 2.84 per cent, respectively from 2005-06 to 2014-15. &nbsp;Also, the export growth in volume and value terms is positive with 18.62 and 48.6 per cent during the same period. The increased export growth in gum guar is mainly attributed to its increasing demand from oil exploration and shale gas production in the world.</div>

Structural Changes in the Performance of Gum guar in India

<div style="text-align: justify;">Two outbreaks of Swinepox in pig population of north-east India were investigated. The disease was diagnosed based on clinical signs, lesions, electron microscopy and by molecular techniques. The virus was identified by PCR amplification targeting the viral late transcription factor-3 (VLTF-3) gene of swinepox virus. The VLTF-3 gene was cloned and sequenced. Phylogenetic analysis based on VLTF-3 gene sequence showed that the Swinepox viruses identified in these outbreaks were clustered along with the other Swinepox isolates reported across the globe and were distinctly separated from the other members of the poxviridae family. The north-eastern states of India, being a hub for pig husbandry, are the home for over a quarter of all India&rsquo;s pig population. Till now swinepox was not reported from this part of India. To the authors&rsquo; knowledge, this is the first report on detection and characterization of swinepox from the north-eastern part of India.&nbsp;</div>

Detection and characterization of Swinepox virus from pig population of Assam, a North Eastern state of India

<p><strong>Background:</strong> The per capita net availability of pulses in India has been increased from 15.5 kg per year in 2018-19 to 19.6 kg in 2021-22. Efforts made to bridge the gap between demand and supply of pulses in the country has resulted in reducing the gap to some extent in recent years and still country is depended on import to meet the growing demand of the pulses such as pigeon pea, lentils and peas. Few studies predicted the demand and supply of pulses as a whole in the country and no studies analyzed the pulse wise demand supply gap in India. Hence, the present study was proposed to predict the demand and supply of major pulses such as chickpea (Gram/Chana), pigeon pea (Tur/Arhar), black gram (urd bean), mung bean (Green gram) and lentil (Masur) in India for a period, 2024-2030.<br />
<br />
<strong>Methods:</strong> The present study has been used the crop data on area, production and yield of major pulses including chickpea (Gram/Chana), pigeon pea (Tur/Arhar), black gram (urd bean), mung bean (Green gram) and lentil (Masur) for a period of 29 years (1985-2024) collected from the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of India, New Delhi. Household consumption expenditure data was collected from the National Sample Survey office for 2011-12 from the Government of India. The supply projection was estimated by using linear regression model and demand projections were done by using behaviouristic approach.<br />
<br />
<strong>Result:</strong> Decadal trend in area, production and yield of pulses from 1970-2010 showed mixed trends of increase and decrease, whereas in 2010-2020, chickpea, pigeon pea, mung bean and black gram showed positive trend in area, production and yield but lentil alone showed negative trend in production. Import dependency of the pulses in the total availability has reduced to 8.92 per cent in 2021-22 from 19.42 per cent in 2009-10. Import dependency of the pulses in the total availability has reduced to 8.92 per cent in 2021-22 from 19.42 per cent in 2009-10. The availability of pulses has grown at a rate of 3.73 per cent from 2009 to 2021. Chick Pea, Tur, Mung bean, Urd bean and Lentils together contributed on an average 88.7 per cent to the total pulses production and 83.73 per cent of pulses availability from 2013 to 2021. Production of these five pulses has increased to 23.04 million tonnes in 2020-21 from 17.3 million tonnes from 2013-14. Gram is the single pulse contributed more than 40 per cent of the pulse production of the country in the above period. Demand supply projection showed a net surplus of 0.81-3.89 mt in the case of pulses and 5.64 -7.63 mt in the case of gram and 0.89 to 1.91 mt in Urd and 0.68 to 1.57 mt in Mung bean during 2024-2030. But in the case of pigeon pea and lentil there may be a net deficit in the range of 3-2.42 and 1.13-1.04 mt, respectively, during 2024-2030. Efforts should be made to bridge the gap in demand and supply of pigeon pea and lentil by the way of bringing new areas under pulses and developing the technologies suitable for the clusters.</p>


<p>Demand and Supply Projections for Pulses in India</p>


<div>The peculiarity of India&rsquo;s pulse production scenario highlighted that although India is the largest producer of pulses in the world, its domestic demand outstrips domestic production and the shortfall is met from imports. India imported nearly 5.6 million tons of pulses worth Rs. 18748 crore during 2017-18. The national demand for pulses is increasing as a consequence of increasing population, increasing vegetarianism, measures adopted to tackle the problem of protein energy malnutrition and this necessitates the concerted efforts to increase the production of pulses. Long-term solution to meet demand for pulses lies in increasing the production of pulses in the country which is indeed a challenge for us to ensure supply of pulses as their cultivation is primarily taken up under rain-fed conditions on marginal &amp; sub-marginal lands and is prone to production losses due to moisture stress. The current production scenario of pulses in India reveals that the domestic supply of pulses is nearly capable of meeting the growing demand of its consumers. About 30 million hectares of land is under pulses, producing about 25 million tons annually during 2017-18. Moreover, the realignment of cropping pattern to relatively less water-intensive crops such as pulses in water-scarce areas will have multitude benefits for all.</div>


<div>Dynamics of Production Profile of Pulses in India</div>


<div style="text-align: justify;">Pulses are an important ingredient in the vegetarian diet of Indian masses. These are important because these have a high value for maintaining the optimal blood sugar levels and also restoring energy over a long period of time after the meals because the carbohydrates provided by pulses are released slowly as compared to cereals. In general, pulses are one of the most sustainable crops as it utilizes only 359 liter of water to produce one kg of pulses as compared to 1,802 liter for soybeans and 3,071 liters for groundnut. They play a significant role in contributing to soil quality by fixing nitrogen in the soil. India is one of the largest producer as well as consumer of a wide variety of pulses that is dominated by the tropical and sub-tropical crops such as chickpea, black gram, pigeon pea, green gram, lentil &amp; so on. In this study, analysis has been done to help out the researcher and policy makers to take decisions regarding future initiatives and programs. In India during 2017-18 pulses were grown over an area of 29.99 million hectare producing 25.23 million tones with yield of 841 kg / per hectare. The cropping area of pulses in Haryana as compared to India is almost decreasing. The trend of contribution of pulses by Haryana at national level is also decreasing which reduces from 0.10 million tons in 2000-01 to 0.06 million tons in 2016-17. In India, about 5.63 to 10.90 percent share of food grains production is of pulses. The percentage growth rate in the cropped area as well as in production of total pulses in India shows much fluctuation but serious downfall in case of Haryana. The present study tries to review and analyze the current policy environment and suggests ways and means to improve the pulses production scenario in the country and Haryana as well. It advocates the need to diversify from cereal&ndash;based cropping systems to pulses-based cropping system with certain policy decisions like crop diversification, improving seed replacement rate, improved crop production techniques etc. This paper analyses status of pulse crop in India as a whole and Haryana in particular along with paradigm shift required in policy decision, pulse research, technology generation &amp; dissemination, commercialization along with capacity building of farmers and frontier areas of research &amp; extension.</div>

<div style="text-align: justify;">Pulses Production: Status, Trends and Strategies in India&nbsp;</div>

<p><strong>Background:</strong> Wheat is pre-eminent among the world&rsquo;s crops in regard to its importance as a staple food of mankind. India is the second largest producer of wheat in the world after China and contributes more than 12 per cent to the global wheat basket. The most important crop after rice in India is wheat and occupies approximately 27.80 million ha area. India has witnessed a significant increase in total food grain production of 233.88 million tons. On the other hand, India is also the second largest wheat consumer after China. Thus, wheat and its various products play an increasingly significant role in managing India&rsquo;s food security.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Methods: </strong>The data of wheat production, area harvested and yield for last six decades have been procured from FAO, Government of India. The change in production function of a crop has been estimated by using linear function and compound growth rate. Further, the Cuddy-Della Valle Index has also been calculated.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
<strong>Result: </strong>The study showed an average increase in area, production and yield of wheat crop by 144.53 per cent, 896.54 per cent and 307.53 per cent in case of India, respectively whereas in China, the area was decreased by 7.81 per cent and the increase in production and yield by 279.97 per cent and 238.68 per cent, respectively. The wheat production in India and China has been increased by 0.000265 per cent and 0.000428 per cent, respectively due to yield effect and the change due to interaction between yield and area were 0.049576 per cent and -0.00855 per cent, respectively. Further, the results by linear regression model and compound growth rate model were, the production and yield of wheat in China showed highly significant growth rate of 1.033 per cent and 1.035 per cent giving an increase of 20.532 lakh tons per year and 0.881 quintal per hectare yield every year as compared to India but the area was found to be good fitted for India <em>i.e;</em> 1.014 per cent giving an annual increase of 2.949 lakh hectares. The instability was low in case of area, production and yield because of the slow growth rate. The findings of this study have far-reaching implications that will have a significant impact on the planning, execution and design of appropriate methodologies in order to achieve meaningful and fruitful results not only for wheat growers, but also for other sectors that essentially provide feedback to agencies involved in various demonstration programs.<br />
&nbsp;</p>


All India Coordinated Research Projects and Value for Cultivation and Use in field crops in India: Genesis, Outputs and Outcomes

Farmer’s Perception of River Water contamination in India: A Case study of Rohini River in Maharajganj, India

Vegetable Transplanters for India: A Review

Transboundary Animal Diseases in the Perspective of North East India: A Review

Structural Changes in the Performance of Gum guar in India

Detection and characterization of Swinepox virus from pig population of Assam, a North Eastern state of India

Demand and Supply Projections for Pulses in India

Dynamics of Production Profile of Pulses in India

Pulses Production: Status, Trends and Strategies in India

Exploring the Performance of Wheat Crop in India and China