International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid-Tropics (ICRISAT) is a non-profit organization in India.

It was founded in 1972 by a consortium of organizations convened by the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations. Its charter was signed by the FAO

Fão

Fão is a town in Esposende Municipality in Portugal....

and the UNDP. Since its inception, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, the host country, has granted a special status to ICRISAT as a UN Organization operating in the Indian territory making it eligible for special immunities and tax privileges.

ICRISAT is managed by a full time Director General functioning under the overall guidance of an international Governing Board. The current Director General is William Dar

William Dar

William Dollente Dar is an international administrator, currently serving as the Director General of ICRISAT. He is a citizen of the Philippines where he was born, raised and educated. He specialised originally in horticulture, receiving his doctoral degree from the University of the Philippines...

(Philippines). The current chair of the Board is Nigel Poole (UK).

The Agro-Eco Region: The Semi-Arid Tropics

The semi-arid tropics (SAT) region is characterized by highly variable, low-to-medium rainfall and poor soils, further characterized by lack of irrigation. In general, the historical average annual rainfall in the SAT is below 700 mm. In agricultural policy terms, this region is considered to be a less favored area (LFA). There has been some scholarly disagreement as to whether this region is inhabited by more poor people in South Asia compared to irrigated areas, and the assessment is that there is at least no difference in the incidence of poverty . Based on large amount of data on crop yields and farmers’ income compiled from nearly 300 studies across the world, Byerlee and others state that in this region, many improved NRM practices that reverse land degradation, improve soil condition, and provide much-needed water and nutrients for crops can make a large difference, whether motivated by alternative or modern agricultural philosophies. (Reference). Recent studies reveal that there is indeed a noticeable bias in favor of agricultural investments in the irrigated or more favored areas.

Research strategy

ICRISAT adopts Integrated genetic and natural resources management as its overarching research strategy. The aim is to combine tested methods of crop commodity research with well established practices in research in natural resources management. The original goal was to use crop improvement research as the basis to improve food availability in drought-prone areas of the tropics. In the last ten years, ICRISAT research, especially in India, China, the Philippines and Vietnam, has tended to emphasize creation and sustenance of rural livelihoods in addition to releasing crop varieties that yield better.

Mandate crops

ICRISAT performs crop improvement research, using conventional as well as methods derived from biotechnology, on the following crops: Chickpea

Chickpea

The chickpea is a legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae...

, Pigeonpea, Groundnut

Peanut

The peanut, or groundnut , is a species in the legume or "bean" family , so it is not a nut. The peanut was probably first cultivated in the valleys of Peru. It is an annual herbaceous plant growing tall...

Pearl millet

Pearl millet is the most widely grown type of millet. Grown in Africa and the Indian subcontinent since prehistoric times, it is generally accepted that pearl millet originated in Africa and was subsequently introduced into India. The center of diversity, and suggested area of domestication, for...

Sorghum

Sorghum is a genus of numerous species of grasses, one of which is raised for grain and many of which are used as fodder plants either cultivated or as part of pasture. The plants are cultivated in warmer climates worldwide. Species are native to tropical and subtropical regions of all continents...

and Small millets

Research themes

The mandate of ICRISAT research is to primarily produce International Public Goods that are relevant and can be used across regions of the world. This is interpreted often to mainly mean publishing scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals.

ICRISAT conducts its research under four themes: Agro-ecosystems development, Harnessing biotechnology(bioinformatics), Crop improvement and management, and Institutions, Markets, policy and Impacts

Genebank

The ICRISAT Genebank serves as a repository for the collection of germplasm

Germplasm

A germplasm is a collection of genetic resources for an organism. For plants, the germplasm may be stored as a seed collection or, for trees, in a nursery.-See also:*Germ plasm, the germ cell determining zone...

of the five mandate crops – sorghum

Sorghum

, pearl millet

Pearl millet

chickpea

Chickpea

The chickpea is a legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae...

, pigeonpea and groundnut

Peanut

; and six small millets – finger millet, foxtail millet, little millet, kodo millet, proso millet and barnyard millet. The collection has over 119,700 germplasm accessions assembled from 144 countries. Several landraces now conserved in the ICRISAT genebank have disappeared from their natural habitats in Africa and Asia.

Innovations and Impact of ICRISAT Crop Improvement Research

Most of ICRISAT’s crop improvement research is directed at LFAs, At an aggregate level, there is evidence from India that crop improvement research is having favorable productivity and poverty impacts in many LFAs. Based on an econometric analysis of time-series data for three different types of agricultural areas (irrigated,high-potential rainfed, and low-potential rainfed), non-ICRISAT experts found more favorable marginal returns (measured as Indian rupees of agricultural production per additional hectare planted to modern varieties) for crop improvement research in low-potential rainfed areas than in either high-potential rainfed areas or irrigated areas. Moreover, additional crop research investment in low potential rainfed areas lifts more people out of poverty than in the other two types of areas (reference). They found that ICRISAT-improved chickpea varieties have been widely adopted in a poor tribal area in Gujarat, India

India

, with favorable impacts on yields, unit production costs, and net returns per hectare. ICRISAT’s package of improved groundnut varieties grown in combination with improved agronomy practices is another example of a commodity- improvement program that has paid off handsomely in an LFA – in this case the semi-arid tropical areas of Central India.

Two major science-based breakthroughs attributed to crop improvement research at ICRISAT relate to Pearl Millet and Pigeonpea. A team of researchers at ICRISAT have released the first-ever, public sector

Public sector

The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...

-bred marker-assisted hybrid pearl millet, HHB 67. This was released in India in 2006. It is assessed to have superior agronomic performance and improved tolerance to terminal drought. The first-ever release of a hybrid pigeonpea by ICRISAT researchers has been reported in 2008

Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT)

Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) is a strategic coalition for information, communication and capacity building, operating in South Asia (SA) and West and Central Africa (WCA) . VASAT links and mobilizes stakeholders for drought mitigation in the semi-arid tropics. It is an innovative and cost effective medium to educate and support a critical mass of rural women and men spread across vast geographical areas by informing them about drought and desertification.

VASAT ingrains a triple-helix approach in all its activities. Source of Agricultural Information, Innovative ICT4D delivery mechanisms and ODL

ODL

ODL might be an acronym or abbreviation for:* Object Definition Language* Open and Distance Learning* Operational Document Library * Oklahoma Department of Libraries* Observations of Daily Living...

methodology act as the three strands. VASAT focus on the need to build advanced online content organization for agricultural sciences has led to the development of a semantically-enabled Mediawiki

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...

service (reference, http://vasatwiki.icrisat.org) by ICRISAT. It also contributed to the design and development of the Agropedia

Agropedia

agropedia is an online knowledge repository for information related to agriculture in India. It includes universal meta models and localized content for a variety of users with appropriate interfaces built in collaborative mode in multiple languages...

(reference http://agropedia.net) by a team of computer scientists and engineers at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK).

Information Products and Services

ICRISAT formally adopted an Open Access policy for its research publications in 2009. It is among a small number of agricultural research organizations to do so (refer to ROARMAP). As of June 2010, about 3000 publications are available online

DBT-ICRISAT Platform for Translational Research on Transgenic Crops (PTTC)

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is collaborating with the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, to establish a DBT-ICRISAT Platform for Translational Research on Transgenic Crops (PTTC) at ICRISAT’s global headquarters at Patancheru, near Hyderabad in India.

According to the Director General of ICRISAT, Dr William Dar, the PTTC will strengthen transgenic research for crop improvement by providing a platform, building synergies among institutions. ICRISAT will continue to harness transgenic research to solve problems that cannot be solved through conventional breeding.

Birds of ICRISAT

The ICRISAT Campus in Patancheru

Patancheru

Patancheru also known as Patan Cheruvu, is a suburb in Hyderabad, India and mandal headquarters in Medak district in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh located about 32 km from the centre of city on the Hyderabad-Sholapur highway, and around 15km from HITEC City. Earlier, it was the...

, Hyderabad, AP is known to be rich in flora and fauna with an abundance of birds in particular. Some of the species of birds spotted at the campus are below.

External links

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