Reconstructing the Plant Type to Unleash Productivity and Cropping Systems Potential

______________________________From Orphan Crop to Pacesetter

Shorter shorts
Continuing to push the envelope, ICRISAT breeders are now testing even shorter-duration types, which mature in just 3 months. These would provide even greater cropping system flexibility. An exciting potential niche is within the rice-wheat systems of the Indo-Gangetic Plains.

Spanning four countries in south Asia, and home to approximately 260 million poor, this critical agro-ecosystem has been showing signs of instability apparently associated with the high-input, cereals-dominated cropping system introduced during the Green Revolution. The insertion of legumes into the rotation could help make it more sustainable, but traditional varieties take too long to mature – pushing the following crop (wheat) too far into the hot season.

Under the auspices of the CGIAR Systemwide Rice-Wheat Program, ICRISAT and NARS have found that an extra-early pigeonpea, ICPL 88039, has sufficiently short duration to be harvestable well in advance of the optimal wheat sowing date. Thus, it can be inserted into the warm-season rotation in place of rice when and where needed, e.g., where water shortages,

price incentives, soil fertility constraints, etc., cause farmers to seek additional options. If this new niche proves successful, it could stimulate another major expansion of pigeopea area and production into the area known as the "food basket" of south Asia.

Another niche for the extra-shorts is in the tropical latitudes, sown just after rice harvest. ICPL 179 has shown immense promise in this system in Sri Lanka. The potential area for this application is vast, encompassing the tropical rice belt of southeast Asia.

A special opportunity for women
Yet another interesting gain from the short-duration types is their suitability for green pea production (Faris et al. 1987). Immature (green) pigeonpea seeds are consumed as a fresh vegetable in many parts of India, the Caribbean, and southern and eastern Africa, where it attracts high prices and delivers a crop (and the ensuing profits) more quickly than dry peas. Since short-duration varieties are relatively photoperiod insensitive, they can be sown at different times of the year (under irrigation) to reap higher off-season prices for fresh produce. If pods are removed, repeated flushes of flowers can be stimulated and several pea crops

harvested from the same plants.

Short-duration green pigeonpea creates a chance for the poor person’s crop to become a springboard to prosperity. Women, who are often involved in the post harvest processing and marketing of pigeonpea, stand to especially gain from this opportunity.