Development and Deployment of Rust Resistant Wheat Varieties in India – Insights from Technology Transfer and Policy Response from the National Seed Production Program
Sendhil R et al. 2023. Development and Deployment of High Yielding Rust Resistant Wheat Varieties in India – Insights from Technology Transfer and Policy Response from the National Seed Production Program. Journal of Cereal Research 15 (1): 144-156. http://doi.org/10.25174/2582- 2675/2023/131519
13 Pages Posted: 10 Mar 2021 Last revised: 13 Jun 2023
Date Written: January 1, 2021
Abstract
Wheat, a major Indian staple food crop is largely prone to rusts infection. Inter alia, wheat producers have been advocated to adopt the recently released innovative technologies (rust resistant high yielding wheat varieties) developed under the All India Coordinated Research Project to counter the significant yield losses. In the milieu, we investigated the technological trend in terms of seed indent followed by policy options for transfer of technology at farmers’ field. Research findings indicated that the wheat producers adopted old technologies (varieties in our case). In the recent past five years, the trend hasn’t witnessed any drastic change despite several rust resistant varieties have been tested and released for various agro-climatic conditions. Recent varieties take about 5 years to reach their peak adoption since release and is attributed to the innovative transfer of technologies. At the producers’ level, technologies have been upscaled though frontline demonstrations, especially on cluster mode. Demonstrations resulted in an average yield gain of 699 kg/ha for an innovative rust resistant technology (HD 2967) in comparison to its check. Despite the increasing demand and promotion of latest technologies, the need and availability of ‘producer choice variety’ is still persisting which has to be addressed. Innovations like ‘community seed banks’, enabling public-private partnership, contract farming (quadpartite model), participatory demonstrations and blockchain enabled ‘seed tracker’ will strengthen the transfer of technology system in Indian wheat production.
Keywords: Breeder seed production, rust resistant varieties, seed replacement rate (SRR), seed bank, HD 2967, HD 3086.
JEL Classification: L23, L24, Q16
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation