2 research projects on improving food security to be launched

In a move aimed at improving food security, city-based ICRISAT  along with other organisations will undertake two major  research programmes to identify ways to increase food production and formulate policies.

The Fund Council of CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research), the world's largest international agriculture research coalition, had approved two ten-year research programmes aimed at improving food, nutrition and income security of billions of poor in dry-land tropics of the world, a senior official of ICRISAT said.

The CGIAR research programs on grain legumes and dry-land cereals, led by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), have a combined three-year budget of USD 223.4 million.

"The two global research-for-development collaborations are vital in sustainably increasing production of grain legumes and dryland cereals, improving the nutrition of the poor. It also helps identifying policies and institutions necessary for small holder farmers in rural communities, particularly women, to access markets and improve their
livelihoods," the official told PTI.

The grain legumes program aims to benefit 300 million small holder farm households from an average 20 per cent yield increase by the end of its first 10-year cycle, with a projected USD 4.5 billion savings as cumulative benefits of increased food production and nitrogen fertiliser saved, the official explained.

This program focuses on improving chickpea, common bean, cowpea, groundnut, faba bean, lentil, pigeon pea and soybean crops grown by poor families in five regions- South and Southeast Asia, Western and Central Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Western Asia as well as North Africa.