Surinder Sud: The plight of pulses

FARM VIEW

The area of production as well as the per hectare yield of these crops have remained more or less static since 1964-65.

Low availability and high prices of pulses in the international market may have triggered the recent abnormal spurt in dal prices, but the fundamental cause is the stagnation in the production of pluses. Pulses, in fact, is the one sector that has remained unaffected by the Green Revolution. The area of production as well as the per hectare yield of these crops have remained by and large static since 1964-65. That year, the country bagged a total pulses harvest of 12.42 million tonnes from an area of 23.88 million hectares. In 2005-06, these crops still share almost the same area, 23.61 million hectares, that threw up a total output of just 13.9 million tonnes. Similarly, the per hectare yield, reckoned at 590 kg last year, was not too different from the 520-kg per hectare yield in 1964-65.

These numbers speak volumes about the plight of these crops which form part of the staple diet and constitute an important source of dietary protein for the common man. There are many reasons for this dismal scenario. The absence of more productive technology is just one of them, and not the main reason, as is generally made out to be.

Skewed pricing policy has transformed food crops such as wheat and rice to virtual cash crops for farmers due to assured marketing at remunerative prices. Consequently, pulses have been pushed to more and more marginal lands in rain-fed areas. Hardly 15 per cent of the entire pulses acreage has irrigation facilities. Then, there's hardly any marketing support. As such, production as well as marketing risks are relatively high in these crops.

Combined together, these factors act as a disincentive for cultivators to invest in yield-enhancing inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides. This, in turn, often leads to deficiency of major, secondary and micro-nutrients in the soil, further stunting the crop's growth. Soil that's deficient of crucial nutrients like zinc, boron, sulphur and so on, is quite common in regions where pulses are cultivated.

Besides, pulse crops are vulnerable to many diseases and pests. A few notable amongst them being the yellow mosaic virus and powdery mildew in mung, urad and cowpea; the sterility mosaic in arhar; and wilt and blight in gram.

Indeed, there has been no dearth of new varieties of pulse crops being developed by the country's agricultural research network comprising institutes such as the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and state agricultural universities. But most of these do not have the potential to provide as spectacular a boost to crop yields as the semi-dwarf wheat and rice varieties did, heralding the Green Revolution.

Their response to irrigation and fertilisers is also not as perceptible as in wheat and rice. Besides, these are mostly situation-specific varieties and do not possess wide-adaptability to cover large tracts.

What's worse, the pulse growers do not usually replace their old seeds with new ones. The new varieties, therefore, fail to make way to the farmers' fields. Besides, the extension agencies, inefficient as they are, hardly pay any attention to transit of new production technology for pulse crops.

The potential of the new varieties and cultivation techniques to raise the output of pulses can, indeed, be gauged from the wide gap in the crop yields at the farmers' fields. Other pointers include the front-line crop production demonstrations carried out under the all-India coordinated crop improvement projects of the ICAR and the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (agricultural science centres). In the case of gram, for instance, the average yields recorded in the demonstrations using improved varieties and technology came to about 1,383 kg a hectare. This is about 20 per cent higher than the average yield of 1,158 kg obtained by farmers. Similarly, the yield of arhar with improved technology can be about 1,285 kg a hectare, about 27 per cent higher than farmers' average of 999 kg. The yield gap in mung is reckoned to be around 29 per cent and urad about 32 per cent.

The strategy being followed by the ICAR for raising the production potential of these crops basically involves genetic improvement of the crop plants through hybridisation and biotechnology, including the production of transgenic variants. These technologies are proposed to be used also to improve the crops' inherent capacity to withstand stress like soil salinity as well as drought, disease and pest attacks.

Efforts to search for relevant genes in the wild relatives of the cultivated pulses and elsewhere, are on. Some success has already been achieved in locating genes that can enhance the pulse crops' ability to withstand moisture stress.