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Several farmers of Aagolai village in western Rajasthan have found a new means to skip lunch and work in their farms till the evening. All they have for breakfast is sogra, flat bread of pearl millet, which is enough to keep them going till evening without lunch.
Pearl millet
Pearl millet is today not only producing greater yields and income for farmers across north-western India, but has improved the productivity of the cultivators. For, packed with healthy nutrients, the cereal can, indeed, sustain hunger for hours longer than other foods.
This is largely an upshot of a programme called Harnessing Opportunities for Productivity Enhancement (HOPE), unveiled by the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) and its partners across India and sub-Saharan Africa.
Headquartered in Hyderabad with two regional hubs and five country offices in sub-Saharan Africa, the institute is a non-profit organisation that conducts agricultural research for development in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The institute celebrated 40 years of existence here recently.
Icrisat technology
Icrisat’s hybrid technology has been greatly instrumental in increasing production of pearl millet from 3.5 million tonnes in the 1950s to 9.5 mt today without a significant increase in land area.
“The average national yield of this millet is about one tonne a hectare. Just four states — Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra and Rajasthan — today account for more than 90 per cent of the pearl millet area of nine million hectares in India,” a senior scientist with Icrisat pointed out.
Under the HOPE programme, during the last three years, about 13,000 farmer households were provided with 20 tonnes of seeds of 17 improved pearl millet hybrids.
Higher yield
“The improved technology resulted in a yield increase of 30-150 per cent over local crop management practices. Now this is not only a staple food for rural households in these states, but also used as cattle and poultry feed,” the scientist said.
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