1752 climate resilient crop varieties released in India since 2014

Vibha Sharma

New Delhi, December 13

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has developed resilient varieties in different crops tolerant to climatic stresses to improve food grain production in the face of changing climate, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told the Lok Sabha in a written reply.

Tomar said since 2014, as many as 2122 varieties have been released, out of which 1752 are climate resilient varieties, which include 400 abiotic stress tolerant varieties and 1352 are biotic stress tolerant.

“Although climate change is understood to have its negative impact on food crops, through the help of technology the negative impacts have been dealt with effectively. With the government interventions, the foodgrain production has continuously increased in the country during the last 5 years despite the impact of climate change,” Tomar said in response to a question by YSR Congress leader N. Reddeppa on steps taken by the government on enhancing foodgrain yield through sustainable methods and other related questions regarding challenges of sustaining domestic food production in the face of changing climate.

Enlisting various measures taken by the Centre, Tomar said the ICAR has launched a flagship network project, namely National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA), to study the impact of climate change on agriculture, including crops, livestock, horticulture and fisheries and develop and promote climate resilient technologies in agriculture which will address vulnerable areas—regions prone to extreme weather conditions like droughts, floods, frost, heat waves, etc.

Apart from climate resilient food varieties, 68 location-specific climate-resilient technologies have been developed, agricultural contingency plans for 650 districts prepared.

“Based on vulnerability assessment, climate-resilient technologies are being demonstrated on farmers’ fields in 151 clusters covering 446 village,” he said, adding that in the past decade, 16,958 capacity building programmes were conducted throughout the country under NICRA project to educate stakeholders on various aspects of climate change and resilient technologies, covering 514816 different stakeholders including farmers to enable wider adoption of climate resilient technologies.