Varietal Spectrum of Seed Production of Pulses in India: An Updated Approach

Abstract

Pulses play a pivotal role in Indian agriculture as they are considered as the basic source of protein in Indian diet. Therefore, the biggest concern is to feed country’s 1.2 billion population with balanced diet and to maintain the production in line with the growth of population. To step-up production of pulses, quality seed is one of the crucial factors on which the performance and efficiency of other inputs or factors depends. Due to painstaking efforts of different organizations the overall breeder seed production of major pulses increased more than 130 % in the last decade. Breeder seed production in urdbean has continuously increased during the last five years. Similarly, an increasing trend has been seen in pigeonpea (except for the year 2010) with recording the highest seed production of 131.72 t in 2012. Among rabi pulses, breeder seed production of chickpea was highest in 2011 with 1,171.79 t production whereas in lentil and fieldpea it was highest as 53.14 and 94.63 t production in 2011–2012 respectively. The leading varieties are generally those which are high yielding along with resistance to biotic stresses e.g. JG-11 and Vijay in chickpea, BSMR 736 and TJT-501 in pigeonpea, Pant U 31 and IPU 02-43 in urdbean, SML-668 and Samrat in mungbean, Pant L-8, HUL 57 and JL-3 in lentil and Prakas, Vikas and Aman in fieldpea. They are the most preferred varieties with maximum seed indent. Therefore, a more concerted effort would be needed for evolving high yielding varieties having resistance/tolerance to abiotic stresses along with resistance to major biotic stresses in the coming years.