Surinder Sud: Sustaining the wheat revolution

FARM VIEW

Is the wheat revolution, the harbinger of the green revolution, sustainable? The question has assumed significance in view of the deceleration in productivity growth in wheat.

It fell from a healthy 3.57 per cent a year in the 1980s to 2.11 per cent in the 1990s and crashed further to a mere 0.73 per cent in the first three years of this decade.

Thus, it has fallen below the rate of increase in population for the first time ever since the green revolution in the mid-1960s.

Going by the arguments of one of the country's leading wheat experts, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) director S Nagarajan, the wheat revolution can not only be sustained but can also be advanced further.

He seems quite optimistic about the country's potential to continue to raise wheat output without any perceptible expansion in area under this crop.

This optimism is based as much on ensuring better use of the available technology to exploit the untapped potential as on the evolution of new technology, including the new plant type of wheat, having relatively higher inherent productivity.

Nagarajan has dwelt on this issue in detail in a booklet titled Sustaining the green revolution in India "" a success story. It has been published by the Bangkok-based Asia-Pacific Association of Agricultural Research Institutions (APAARI).

Nagarajan traces the genesis of the wheat revolution to the observation in 1962 by noted agricultural scientists like B P Pal and M S Swaminathan, among others, that day-length insensitive, dwarf and input-responsive types of wheat grown in the US and elsewhere could give high yields under Indian conditions as well.

In 1963, Nobel laureate Norman E Borlaug of the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Research Institute (CIMMYT) supplied IARI about one quintal seed of such type of wheat varieties, including Lerma Rojo 64, Sonora 63, Sonora 64 and Mayo 64.

The country-wide trials conducted with these seeds indicated their superiority over the traditionally cultivated Indian wheat strains in terms of yield, though not in chapati-making quality.

The success of these seeds emboldened the government to import in 1966 about 18,000 tonnes of these seeds from Mexico.

That indeed triggered the green revolution because Indian scientists used these seeds for evolving irrigation and fertiliser responsive, high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties like PV 18, Kalyan Sona and Sonalika.

These varieties, thanks to wider adaptability, spread to most wheat-growing regions of the country, leading to a productivity revolution in wheat.

However, it would be unfair to give total credit for the wheat revolution or, for that matter, the green revolution, to the evolution of new varieties and production technology alone.

As pointed out in this booklet as well as by noted farm scientist and APAARI Executive Secretary R S Paroda, the creation of supportive services and infrastructure to catalyse the change was equally responsible.

The setting up of organisations like the national and states seeds corporations for multiplication of seeds and the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and state agencies for providing the price support through procurement prompted the farmers to invest in fertilisers and irrigation to boost production.

The confidence in the sustainability of the wheat revolution despite some formidable odds against it is based on several factors. For one, even the available technology's full potential has not yet been realised.

This is evident in the gap in average yield between the farmers' fields and research farms and between different states and regions. Nagarajan points out that as one moves from Amritsar in Punjab to Jalpaiguri in north West Bengal, the productivity reduces by about 100 kg a hectare for every 100 km.

To take the wheat revolution further, plant breeders are striving to evolve wholly new types of wheat plants, besides hybrid wheat, having the potential to yield around 8 tonne a hectare, against the current realisable yield ceiling of around 6 tonnes.

The new plant would have a longer ear-head to accommodate at least 80 well-filled grains, a deep and functionally efficient root system, and a strong stem to support the heavier grain weight.

Besides, it would have a shorter life span to vacate the field early and would also be immune to diseases and pests. Its grains would have good chapati-making qualities.

Such a plant, if developed soon, would not only push up production for meeting local consumption and export requirements but would also help spare some land for other uses.