ICRISAT Happenings

24 August 2012

No. 1533

(L to R) Dr OP Yadav, Project Coordinator, AICPMIP; DG William Dar; DDG-R D Hoisington; and CLL Gowda during a meeting at Patancheru to identify the pathways to successfully upscale the seed production of publicbred pearl millet hybrids.

Promoting public-private partnership

ICRISAT-HOPE upscales pearl millet hybrid seed production in India Smallholder farmers are often constrained by the lack of access to seeds of improved crops and varieties. This is one of the biggest obstacles to technology utilization, especially to smallholder farmers. Hence, finding ways of supporting reliable seed systems is pivotal in increasing agricultural productivity and improving the livelihoods of smallholder households.

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he ICRISAT-HOPE project recently identified promising pearl millet hybrids from the public and private sectors adapted to India’s arid zone. On 17 August, public and private sector organizations gathered on a single platform at ICRISAT-Patancheru to identify ways to successfully upscale seed production of these public-bred pearl millet hybrids.

Directors of Research and scientists from four partner State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), and senior management and breeders of 18 seed companies of the Pearl Millet Hybrid Parents Research Consortium (PMHPRC) attended the meeting.

address, Director General Dr William Dar spoke on the challenges of ensuring food security and affordability and coping with climate change, and the project’s role in improving the livelihood of small and marginal farmers. He underlined the need to make available quality seeds to farmers as an important component of sharing the results of research. He pointed in the direction of public-private-participatory approaches to aid the process, and urged the participating institutions to remove the hurdles in smooth seed delivery by following successful models like ICRISAT’s Hybrid Parents Research Consortium (HPRC).

Deputy Director General – Research Dr Dave Hoisington welcomed the participants. In his inaugural

In the technical session, partner scientists from SK Rajasthan Agricultural University, CCS Haryana to page 2 ...4

ICRISAT-HOPE upscales....from page 1 Agricultural University, Junagarh Agricultural University, and SK Dantiwada Agricultural University, SK Nagar presented the results of large-scale farmer participatory adoption trials conducted by the project in 2010 and 2011.

The group felt that the identified hybrids should reach farmers in the shortest possible time for them to reap the benefits of research.

Under the chairmanship of Dr OP Yadav, Project Coordinator, All India Coordinated Pearl Millet Improvement Project (AICPMIP) and Dr CLL Gowda, Program Director – Grain Legumes, the group brainstormed on the release/notification process for hybrids, non-exclusive marketing rights to the private sector for public-bred hybrids, structure of royalty payments, price structure of certified seeds, branding of products, challenges in seed production, and private sector policies in seed production of public-bred hybrids.

Dr Dar addressing participants during the meeting.

The platform came in handy for some seed companies to discuss the issue of marketing rights for the identified hybrids with senior management of partner public organizations.

The meeting ended on an optimistic note with the group resolving to strengthen administrative systems to improve public-private partnerships for rapid and efficient seed delivery. g

“Intensificationability” for smallholder households

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hile scientists focus on technologies that would increase productivity and yields, farmers are more concerned with the benefit cost ratio of adopting these new technologies. Costs are incurred with increased yield, so higher yield does not necessarily mean more returns.

So what are the factors to be taken into account when promoting new technologies for rural households? The household’s potential to benefit from such agricultural intensification seems a reasonable answer. And the word that describes this is “Intensificationability’’, which is a measure of the potential for a household to benefit from agricultural intensification. The tongue twister is also a big challenge to scientists when their innovation is not used and has no impact on poverty alleviation.

Along with this, Dr Dave Harris, Principal Scientist - Agroecosystems/Climate Change (Resilient Dryland Systems), gave a presentation on 10 August, to ICRISAT & ICRAF Nairobi staff titled: “Intensificationability” – Limits to agricultural development from a smallholder household perspective: The profitability of rainfed crop production and how it affects the potential for intensification. His presentation was based on measuring the potential for rural households to intensify technologies and its corresponding impact.

The three main factors in the analysis were household size, farm size and profitability. He found profitability data for 29 crops, involving a wide

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ICRISAT Happenings 24 August 2012/1533

Dr D Harris during the seminar in Nairobi.

range of diverse technologies in 15 countries. Results showed that technology improved median profitability by 220%.

However, absolute values of net returns from rainfed cropping ranged only up to $700 per hectare per season.

Since most rural households in sub-Saharan Africa are very small (80% of farmers own less than 2 hectares), returns from adopting improved technology are not attractive compared with other sources of income.

Hence, the fact that very few smallholder households derive their income from agriculture (‘full-time farmers’) needs to be taken into account when promoting improved technologies.

During the discussions, suggestions were put forward for possible solutions, including irrigation which increases the number of cropping seasons per year but may be too costly for smallholder farmers. g

Innovations offered for IACD’s vegetable project

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he vegetable garden run by the ICRISAT Association for Community Development (IACD) provides high quality but low-priced organic vegetables. Delivered free to your desk, it is understandably popular with ICRISAT staff.

However, a recent study by Ms Meredith Bruster, a 2012 Borlaug-Ruan intern sponsored by the World Food Prize Foundation showed that innovations are needed to expand this service.

Ms Bruster, a senior high school student from Iowa in the USA, spent two months working with AVRDC - The World Vegetable Center on ways to enhance the operations of this vegetable garden that sells its produce to campus staff to help fund its training programs for poor neighboring communities.

She recently shared the results of her study at a seminar at AVRDC. Customers highly value the quality, affordability and convenience of vegetables but most cannot buy all they need – and demand is growing. As one customer said, “We are interested in buying the vegetables, but we are never aware of what, when and where they are selling. They only sell to a select number of customers.”

IACD faces the same issues as other small vegetable producer/traders or small NGOs in deciding how to optimize and grow their business. Knowing customers’ needs are vital – particularly when dealing with perishable high-value vegetables.

Ms Bruster analyzed long-term production figures and surveyed over 60 current and potential customers.

The IACD garden sells almost 30 different types of vegetables, but supplies are often erratic and only about a third of crops have total seasonal sales of over Rs 1000. Most money is made from leafy vegetables

(L to R) IACD’s M Surekha and Janet Hoisington discuss the study’s results with M Bruster (center).

while crops like tomato, snake gourd, drumstick and lettuce have low and inconsistent sales.

During the cooler rabi months, sales are double those during the hot, wet kharif season and are mainly from high volume, low value bunches of leafy vegetables including spinach and coriander.

During the summer, spinach is again the bestseller followed by brinjal, and in the hot and wet months most income is from coriander and okra.

To further expand the service, two-thirds of current customers said they were willing to pay a delivery charge of up to Rs 5. For others, a central pick-up point could be developed. In addition to IACD focusing on just its best selling crops, customers also wanted to buy more beans and tomatoes.

AVRDC Regional Director Warwick Easdown said he was very pleased with the opportunity which the study had provided AVRDC to work with ICRISAT for the benefit of the local community. g

Training course on Field Trial & QTL analysis

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he Biometrics Unit at ICRISAT in collaboration with Professor Karl Broman from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and Dr T Nepolean from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, is organizing a training course on R and R/QTL on 3-6 December 2012 at ICRISAT-Patancheru.

The course, designed for researchers and students of plant breeding, molecular biology, agricultural biotechnology and bioinformatics and biometrics, will comprise of three modules: (1)“R software” which includes installation, data management in “R” environment, basic programming and graphics; (2) phenotypic data analysis that covers field/lab

experimental designs (CRD, RCBD, IBDs, Lattice and etc.) including data cleaning, outlier detection and other requirements of proper statistical analysis; linear models and their use in analysis of experimental designs; defining linear models for different types of experimental designs; and mixed models and their analysis; and (3) QTL analysis, cleaning of genotypic data, single marker regression, simple and composite interval mapping and multiple QTL mapping.

To register and for more details, visit http://www. icrisat.org/rcourse.htm or contact Ms B Manjula (b.manjula@cgiar.org) or Dr Abhishek Rathore (a.rathore@cgiar.org) (reach2abhi@gmail.com). g ICRISAT Happenings 24 August 2012/1533

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DG visits RS Paroda genebank

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G William Dar visited the RS Paroda genebank on 21 August, where Dr Hari Upadhyaya appraised him of the newly acquired germplasm and on-going conservation, and research activities in cultivated and wild relatives and pre-breeding in legumes. Dr Dar also visited the seed drying room, medium-term storage facilities, glasshouse experiments and Arachis house.

Dr Shivali Sharma briefed him about the pre-breeding activities in legumes and experiment involving wild Cicer species. g

Dr Shivali Sharma with Dr Hari Upadhyaya, explaining experiments on wild Cicer species to Dr Dar.

Welcome Dr C V Sameer Kumar, an Indian national, joined as Senior Scientist (Pigeonpea Breeding), Research Program – Grain Legumes, on 23 August.

Dr Kumar has a PhD in Genetics and Plant Breeding from Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), Hyderabad, India. Prior to taking up this assignment, he was Senior Scientist

Visitors Log 21 August: Fifteen officials from Maharashtra Council of Agricultural Education and Research (MCAER) and 45 students from Oxford Grammar School, Himayatnagar, Hyderabad.

22 August: Drs John F Angus and Satya Priya from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and 60 students from the Government Degree College for Women, Begumpet.

23 and 24 August: One hundred and eighteen (118) students from Ravindra Bharathi School, Hyderabad.

(Pigeonpea Breeding) and Head, Agricultural Research Station (Tandur) at ANGRAU, where he worked for over 18 years. His work involved developing high-yielding pigeonpea varieties resistant to pod borer, wilt and SMD, hybrids for different agro-ecological niches, and standardization of seed production and agro-techniques.

We welcome Dr Sameer Kumar and his family to Team ICRISAT and wish him all success. g

New appointment Dr Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur, Senior Scientist (Cell/ Molecular Biology), Research Program – Grain Legumes (PTTC), who is currently in the SMG cadre, has been appointed in the international special project staff (SPS) cadre, effective 1 August.

We wish her all the best.

Thought for the week “Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson