Highlighting the importance of ICRISAT’s work in creating the world of tomorrow, especially in addressing extreme poverty, food, nutrient security, and climate change, she emphasized five decades of ICRISAT’s expertise, experience, and capabilities in developing and delivering technologies and innovation in the interest of smallholder farmers. Our work is important and exactly what is needed for the future of tomorrow. The recent visit of Hon’ble Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi to launch ICRISAT’s yearlong golden jubilee celebrations is an endorsement to it. “Now is the time for accelerated scaling up of our tools and technologies for greater impact”- she further added.

Defining the future roadmap, Dr Hughes put forward seven priority areas where urgent interventions for accelerated delivery of our vision and mission are required:

• Scientific reasoning for addressing the needs of tomorrow with a demand-driven research
• Develop & deliver future-ready crops that can withstand the effect of climate change
• Address the impact of climate change on cropping systems
• Make agriculture profitable and sustainable for smallholder farmers
• Empower women and youth and create opportunities for equal access to resources
• Resource optimization for dryland regions
• Address the challenges across the value chain to make dryland agriculture more resilient and sustainable

Reviewing the research progress during the last 2 years, Deputy Director General- Research, Dr Arvind Kumar, commended the efforts and commitment of all the global and regional research programs for their dedication and perseverance in delivering on ICRISAT’s mission, even during the challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic. “This being my first global research review and planning meeting at ICRISAT, I am happy to note that, apart from delivering on the research front we have been able to put in place a reinvigorated more efficient, cohesive, and interconnected research structure that aims to seamlessly integrate and deliver agricultural research outputs across the drylands of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, guided by ICRISAT Strategic Plan (2021-2025) and ICRISAT Medium Term Plan (2021-2023) – said Dr Kumar. “We have the deliverables and now we should communicate our stories of success to the world, weaved around all the elements of the science of discovery to the science of delivery”, he added. Complimenting the future roadmap, DDG-R further highlighted that our research should aspire to deliver on climate resilience, nutrition, and address environmental degradation by undertaking output-driven translational research.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, ICRISAT has significantly delivered on both upstream and translational research, catering to the needs of the global scientific community and smallholder farmers. Some of the significant highlights from the last 2 years across regions are testament to ICRISAT’s position in delivering results even in adverse situations.

Global Research Program-Accelerated Crop Improvement’s efforts led to the commercialization of 37 crop varieties in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, this includes two high oleic groundnut varieties that are among the 17 biofortified crop varieties dedicated by Hon’ble PM of India in 2020 and 2 Chickpea and 1 Pearl millet cultivar, in 2021. Modernizing the crop breeding efforts, speed breeding deployed in chickpea and the Rapid Generation Advancement facilities expanded from a capacity of 35,000 plants per cycle to 70,000 plants per cycle. Several new resistance sources were identified and QTLs mapped for biotic and abiotic stresses and nutritionally important traits. In the area of gene editing: CRISPR constructs for TAG Lipase genes for leaf and immature embryo-based Agrobacterium methods developed. Securing the germplasm, several accessions were deposited at Svalbard Global Seed Vault as first level and second level safety duplication, in 2020 and 2021. The “GxM toolbox” was drafted to enhance the crop fitness to abiotic conditions of environments prevailing in TPE, in addition, the LeasyScan HighThroughput Phenotyping Platform was upgraded with PE F600 scanners. Advanced our efforts to harness AI for UAV field phenotyping to support crop improvement programs. Enabling access of improved seed varieties by the smallholder farmers, developed 2399.5.4 MT Early generation seed; and the evidence suggested that farmers adopting improved groundnut, sorghum, and pigeonpea, experienced increased grain yield by 40.6, 54.9, 51.9% respectively.

Photo: PS Rao, ICRISAT

Some of the key interventions by the Global Research Program- Resilient Farm and Food Systems (RFFS) includes climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, where over 5,600 farm households (40% women) applied doubled-up legume technology on 1,668 ha in central and southern districts of Malawi. RFFS efforts led to grain yield (1275 kg/ha) increase by 30% compared to farmers’ practice in Pearl millet in Niger. ICRISAT Development Center demonstrated that shared resource use could help diversify cropping, promote high-value crops, and aid collective marketing. Deployed digital tools across several projects for efficient delivery and monitoring of activities across regions. Facilitated market linkages with an online market linkage system based on yield estimation and by connecting farmers with potential traders.

In areas of landscapes, soil fertility & water management, ICRISAT’s efforts led to soil loss reduction, increased recharge of groundwater led to increase in the irrigable area from 200 ha to 970 ha in locations of Ethiopia, and increased yields of major crops: wheat by 142%, barley by 100% and faba bean by 66%.

Global Research Program- Enabling Systems Transformation includes a study on consumer behavior & preferences and improves them by introducing some innovative change campaigns like music videos and the photovoice approach. The team undertook a systematic review and meta-analysis to generate science-based evidence on how crops like millets are good for health and nutrition and contributed to addressing the impact of COVID-19 on food security, mostly to women and adolescent girls. Brought some policy recommendations on research influencing the nexus between agri-food value chains and nutrition in Malawi, like: Promote inclusive multi-stakeholder platforms, promote local value addition, and marketing and processing, mainstream nutrition awareness, budgeting for food purchases and nutrition programs, and develop self-regulatory quality-based pricing and quality control mechanism. Evaluation of a framework for measuring climate resilience of smallholder farm systems is another key area of intervention. In addition, provided insights on supporting policy response to Covid19 induced lockdowns and developed framework and tool for multi-dimensional assessment of farming systems sustainability.

Discussing the way forward, the group agreed on strengthening the strategic integration within clusters and programs across regions for sustainable scaling out of cross-region learnings and outputs. ICRISAT is equipped with cross-cutting tools, resources, and vehicles like digital agriculture, geospatial and big data sciences, natural resource and soil health management, agribusiness and incubation platforms, etc., for addressing transformative systems-level interventions. Effective communication strategies are a must for putting out our success stories in front of the world and for positioning ICRISAT in the new era. We need to harness every opportunity and the time ahead bring many prospects for ICRISAT, especially this year being the 50^th anniversary of ICRISAT and the next year being the International Year of Millets.

While celebrating 50 years of its eminent contribution to dryland agriculture, ICRISAT is aware of the growing expectations in the R4 D space. With its vast experience and insights, accumulated over five decades, ICRISAT is prepared to proactively engage itself to bring prosperity to dryland regions in Asia and Africa.

Here is a brief list of ICRISAT’s commitments to future of drylands:

1. International Year of Millets: Millets play an important role in both diversifying the spectrum of food available to end consumers while providing valuable nutrition. Given their natural properties, they also aid in climate adaptation. India is the epicenter of global millet production (approx. 18 million tons per annum). In recognition of their importance and at the behest of India, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution to observe 2023 as International Year of Millets. In accordance, several events are being organized to celebrate this historic global event.
2. Gene Bank: The Gene bank at ICRISAT, Hyderabad, established in 1979, conserves the largest global collection of dryland crops germplasm. Our current collection comprises of over 129,000 accessions of 11 dryland crops: sorghum, pearl millet, chickpea, pigeon pea, groundnut, finger millet, foxtail millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet, little millet and proso millet and their wild relatives. ICRISAT shall continue to share these germplasm accessions to different institutions in India and globally for their use in developing climate resilient, nutritious varieties of different crops.
3. Genomics: ICRISAT has played pivotal role in developing genomic resources for its six mandated crops including development of markers for deployment in crop improvement. ICRISAT will contribute to understand and unearth the immense potential of germplasm diversity through developing pangenomes/super-pangenomes to design future crop varieties/hybrids, optimize and deploy fast-forward sequencing based large-scale discovery of superior haplotypes and candidate genes and their deployment in crop improvement. ICRISAT will develop new genomics tools for more efficient selection at early generation and train young scientists to use genomic tools in crop improvement.
4. Crop Improvement: ICRISAT will continue to work on genetic enhancement of dry land cereals and grain legumes using cutting-edge tools and technologies to develop climate resilient, nutritious varieties of pearl millet, sorghum, finger millet, groundnut, chickpea, and pigeon pea using cutting edge genomic and crop breeding tools and will share the developed varieties with different institutions. The improved varieties combining the productivity traits such as, early maturing, drought and disease tolerance, and yield, together with grain nutritional and physical traits such as, Fe and Zn in sorghum and pearl millet, high oleic in groundnut, dal recovery in pigeon pea among others will be valuable in attaining climate resilience, nutrition outcomes, and profitability to small holder farmers and value chain actors.
5. Rapid Generation Advancement (RGA): ICRISAT has developed Rapid Generation Advancement protocol for chickpea, and efforts are underway to develop RGA protocols for groundnut, pigeonpea, pearl millet, sorghum and finger millet. RGA protocols will enable researchers to advance 4-6 generations in a year in place of 1-2 generations per year under field conditions and therefore will reduce the breeding cycle time from 10-12 years to 3-5 years, thus increase the genetic gain.
6. Climate change: ICRISAT very closely monitors the climate change process in dryland regions of Asia and Africa and will continue to deliver strategy of climate adaptation through development of climate resilient varieties, model climate change for dryland regions and deploy appropriate crops and varieties suitable to different regions. ICRISAT will deploy climate smart technologies based on timely weather advisories working through the concept of climate smart villages and help millions of farmers better tackle climate change effects.
7. Seed Systems: ICRISAT will work with the public and private sector partners in quality seed production, real-time monitoring, establishing traceability, develop and deploy digital tools and platforms for efficient seed demand forecasting, production, and distribution, develop and promote ICT and other knowledge platforms to strengthen seed market linkages and bridge the demand- supply gap both in the formal and informal seed sector. Innovative licensing mechanisms developed by ICRISAT will help the Indian seed sector particularly to tap into a large global market. India can tap the global seed market by strictly adhering to OECD seed guidelines and can export seeds to SAARC countries, countries in West Asia, Africa, and Europe. It will facilitate linkages between formal and informal seed systems to create new complementary distribution pathways. ICRISAT will also strengthen women’s collectives to promote gender-focused seed systems by engaging various potential entry points where women farmers are capacitated and integrated into quality seed production processes, distribution and use of the improved varieties while promoting seed entrepreneurship models by engaging potential farmers, women, and youth in the community.
8. Precision phenotyping: ICRISAT will be engaging in larger joint initiatives and integration on digital precision phenotyping building on center of excellence in phenotyping primarily to assist crop improvement programs. We will intensify the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) based field phenotyping pipeline to collect field agronomic data faster and more efficiently for breeding programs. LeasyScan which is serving best to assess the component traits of adaptation for abiotic stress now will be optimized for biotics stresses (foliar diseases) and nutrient management too, with new PE F600 technology. Our target is to integrate LeasyScan in breeding schema for routine assessment of adaptation traits to serve in-house breeding programs for drought prone areas and open to national partners for more rigorous research for drought and heat stress.
9. Nutrition: Guided by ICRISAT’s mission in reducing malnutrition ICRISAT will continue to serve the most disadvantaged and vulnerable population. ICRISAT crops are highly nutritious, as well as healthy and reduce risk of heart, obesity and other diseases. ICRISAT will work extensively with institutions in Asia and Africa to enhance dietary patterns to reduce malnutrition by increasing the availability of nutrient rich varieties, nutrition education in preparing healthy household level products (by restoring the best traditional practices and introducing new simple practices), increasing the dietary diversity and adequacy in consumption of various food groups. ICRISAT aims at improving the elderly health (geriatric nutrition) by providing the appropriate millet- legume based dietary options and scaling up the evidence-based nutrition interventions to large number of households providing nutrition education among various vulnerable groups and building capacity and skills for nutrition volunteers and government staff in nutrition.
10. Geospatial Science: Crop insurance schemes in India and elsewhere have helped farmers to absorb shocks which are very frequent due to either biotic or abiotic stresses. ICRISAT will use advanced crop monitoring systems and rapid diagnostics to further strengthen this system. India with its strong remote sensing platforms along with open data is in an advantageous position to make this end-to-end solution work seamlessly. ICRISAT has fiercely supported this solution with its extensive experience and expertise. High resolution remote sensing-based crop monitoring (Sentinel 2 @10m) will be used in collaboration with institutions in Asia and Africa for this purpose.
11. Digital Agriculture: ICRISAT envisages use of data driven farming to improve food systems in Asia and Africa Utilizing digital tools, advances in data generation using smart-mobile phones, sensors and satellites with enhanced processing of big data and predictive analytics, ICRISAT shall work to support smallholder farmers to adopt digital tools in agricultural extension, precision agriculture, climate, good agricultural practices, market information, agricultural finance and insurance services. ICRISAT shall work to foster drone services to address labour shortages in rural areas and lower the use of agro-chemicals, enable private entrepreneurs to engage and develop cutting-edge technologies using IoTs, robotics and sensors to enhance efficiency and incomes from small farms.
12. Water conservation and soil health management: ICRISAT will work very closely with institutions on water conservation, soil health management, reversing soil degradation and thus promote regenerative agriculture holistically. In India, so far, ICRISAT has worked across seven states covering about 140 districts and 4600 villages while addressing over 200,000 rural households. This has resulted in improvement in groundwater level, increase in cropping intensity and crop productivity leading to doubling of farmers’ income.
13. Agribusiness Innovations: The Agribusiness and Innovation Platform (AIP) has supported around 40,000 farmers from 25 Producer Companies for running their 62 primary processing centers. It is mentoring 9 MSME units run by tribal farmers producing ICRISAT developed nutritional food formulations using coarse cereals and grain legume crops in Telangana. AIP with support from Tribal Welfare Dept. has provided dietary diversity formulations to address the nutritional deficiency of 18,000 tribal women & children in Telangana, India. AIP is working with 6000 farmers by collectivizing them and providing value addition opportunities in Andhra Pradesh and establishment of 2 food processing units for the tribal farmers in Odisha, India, through handholding and mentoring. Start-ups supported by ICRISAT have been able to create over 2,500 direct jobs and mobilize more than US$ 25 million in funding, benefiting over three million farmers in 2018-19 alone. Over 5,000 individuals were trained in agribusiness promotion, skill development, technology commercialization, incubation management and other areas of agribusiness.
14. Gender Equitable and Women empowerment: ICRISAT works with the communities and engages with women to support their requirements. ICRISAT will conduct collaborative, and participatory research to reach about 100000 women and young girls – marginalized and the vulnerable – in the next 2-3 years and empower them and the communities by enhancing their capacity to make strategic choices, livelihoods and make them more resilient to shocks including pandemics like COVID-19 and climate change.
15. Partnerships and capacity development: ICRISAT will continue to work with different institutions in partnership mode to enhance productivity, improve farmers income and develop entrepreneurs in agriculture through training and capacity development of youth, women scientists, scholars, students, and farmers.
16. Crop Protection:In next five years, ICRISAT plans to develop next generation technologies such as:
    • rapid diagnostic kits to detect invasive and native pests and diseases in real time
    • use of Artificial Intelligence and image/sensor-based technologies to detect disease symptoms much earlier than visible
    • equip farmers with disease and pests forecasting systems to predict outbreaks while providing advisories through various digital platforms like mobile apps for the timely management of crops as well as the timely application of agricultural inputs.
    • ICRISAT being a national coordinator for climate change research on plant protection will strengthen Indian agriculture specially in pulses and cereal crops by mapping the future threats due to pests and diseases and providing evidence by conducting research in state-of-the-art climate change research facilities, thus supporting in the development of climate resilient varieties. Research on Fall army worm in maize and sorghum, emerging threats like blast in millets and rusts and soil borne diseases in pulses and oilseeds will be advanced. ICRISAT believes in purposeful partnerships and welcomes like-minded institutions to join hands and strengthen our resolve to make the drylands prosperous, food-secure, and resilient.

ICRISAT@50 Series Author:

Dr Arun Balamati

To leverage their expertise, both the institutes joined hands to work on an important trait in pigeonpea, in this case herbicide tolerance. As weed infestation is one of the crucial biotic stress factors contributing to huge yield loss in crop plants, more so in pigeonpea. In this backdrop, both the institutes jointly submitted and won a competitive grant from Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India entitled “Developing double herbicide tolerant pigeonpea for improved Weed management employing two pronged approach: haplotype mining in native germplasm and CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing”.

This project aims to deliver (a) Herbicides resistant superior haplotypes; (b) Identify and use of homologs in pigeonpea genome for genome editing; (c) Generation of constructs with promoters, terminators and vectors for expression of Cas9 cassettes that may be extrapolated for other legumes/dicots; (d) The genome-edited lines with double herbicide tolerant trait shall be made available to researchers for further use in their crop improvement programmes. Growers will use these new technologies in combinations to fill in efficacy gaps of diversified  weeds. The main role of ICGEB will be to develop double herbicide tolerant pigeonpea using gene-editing technology while ICRISAT will be performing genome-wide haplotype discovery for targeted genes in diverse set of genotypes followed by phenotypic confirmation.

To mark the official launch of the project, a virtual meeting was held on 11 Feb 2022, where the project teams from both the institutes discussed the roadmap and way forward on project activities. Principal Investigator from ICGEB, Dr Tanushri Kaul and from ICRISAT, Dr Rajeev Varshney shared the background work done to secure this project, which has great potential to deliver solution to herbicides in pigeonpea. Dr Tanushri acknowledged how the sequence information for targeted genes from pigeonpea genome provided by ICRISAT helped in developing the guide RNA that is very crucial step in initiating the gene editing experiment.

This project provides a great opportunity to deploy genomics and gene editing approaches for bringing sustainable solution to herbicide problem in pigeonpea; said PI from ICGEB Dr Tanushri Kaul. In addition to developing herbicide tolerant products, this project will also demonstrate the power of genomics in fast pacing the genetic improvement of crops, in this case pigeonpea; said Dr Rajeev Varshney, PI from ICRISAT. Furthermore, Dr Rachit Saxena and Dr Manish Pandey from ICRISAT provided more insights on technical work and future directions to gain more by working together through discovery of additional such genes and make available for use in pigeonpea improvement.

The meeting was also attended by researchers from ICRISAT (Dr Damaris Odeny, Dr Prakash Gangashetty, Dr P. Sudhakareddy, Ms Anu Chitikineni, Mr Prasad Bajaj & Mr J. Harshvardhan and Mr Nilesh Mishra) and ICGEB (Dr Rachna Verma, Ms Jyotsna Bharti, Mr Arul Prakash, Mr Bhupendra Rawat and Ms Sonia Khan).

Project title: Developing double herbicide tolerant pigeonpea for improved Weed management employing two pronged approach: haplotype mining in native germplasm and CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing

Principal Investigator: Dr Rajeev Varshney;

Duration: 3 Years

Funding Agency: Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology, Government of India.

Afterlife in Nairobi became unbearable due to high living expenses, Elizabeth moved to Makueni, one of the ASAL counties in Kenya, with her husband and six children in 2015. She was later introduced to new Drought Tolerant Crops (DTC) varieties alongside training on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and Post-Harvest Handling (PHH) by ICRISAT through the Accelerated Value Chain Development (AVCD) Program. Her fist attempt was cultivation of sorghum and green gram using the improved varieties. After a splendid performance, Elizabeth says that she was motivated to increase her farm size from 2 acres to 5 acres, which she acquired from her family. “Through DTCs like sorghum, I have been able to make money and have food for the family and the cattle. This is because sorghum matures faster and the yield is high, unlike maize which mostly fails when the rain is inadequate. Farming DTCs has helped me and my family to build 2 permanent houses, pay school fees for my children up to tertiary levels, among other investments,” says Elizabeth adding that she couldn’t have accomplished this if she continued staying in the city.

Once referred to as orphaned crops, climate smart crops or DTCs (sorghum, pearl millet, finger millet, pigeonpea, cowpea, green gram, and groundnut) have become an income generating activity for farmers in ASAL areas especially Makueni, Kitui, and Taita Taveta Counties, and a huge contributor to national food and nutrition security. The three counties are part of the ASALs’ production that account for about 48% of sorghum, 60% of millets, 99% of pigeonpea, 95% of green gram and 93% of cowpea produced in Kenya.

In our field visits, we also met Ms. Catherine, a farmer who has embraced farming using DTCs and is now making better income than when she was farming maize. She cultivates sorghum, millet, and green grams on her two-acre farm in Makueni. Ms. Mbili who also trains farmers on farming the DTCs said in one acre of sorghum plantation, she is able to harvest between 15 to 20 bags of 100 Kgs with a bag selling at KES 3,000. This means that from one acre alone, she generates up to KES 60,000, more than twice of her income when she had previously put the land under maize where brokers used to buy the grain for as low as KES 1,200 per bag.

“Many of the farmers in this area used to rely on government relief food, but through improved varieties of DTCs they have been able to attain food security and generate income,” says Ms Mbili. “The AVCD program has incorporated the use of technology in training of farmers where we teach them the need and use of digital agricultural innovations to apply in their farming enterprises. So as not to leave anyone out, we have included the youth in the digital agriculture training so that they can help their elderly parents in accessing information on farming and marketing”, she added.

Participants of the AIFSD workshop.

Elizabeth and Catherine’s households are among 163,000 households which have been provided with improved DTCs seed varieties through the AVCD program. This program was completed in 2021. Even though farmers like Elizabeth and Catherine continue reaping benefits brought about by use of improved varieties, there are still challenges across the value chain that impend optimization of the benefits. Lack of functional seed production and delivery systems, inadequate extension support, inadequate farmer coordination (Farmer Producer Organizations – FPOs), dysfunctional input and off-take markets are still a challenge.

To support small holder farmers like Elizabeth and Catherine, USAID through FTF-Kenya has funded a new program, Accelerated Institutional and funding Food Systems Development Program (AIFSD), to address the mentioned challenges by enhancing institutional capacity of actors across DTC value chain. One of the main component of the program is to strengthen the capacity of extension service providers in Kitui, Makueni and Taita Taveta. AIFSD conducted a three day workshop at the Agricultural Training Centre (ATC) in Makueni aimed at: enhancing capacity of extension officers to disseminate extension information on improved agricultural practices for increasing on-farm productivity of DTCs; Mainstreaming the use of digital technologies for the extension officers in providing accurate and timely information on production, post-harvest handling, nutrition and markets. The workshop which had 38 participants drawn from county agriculture, health and meteorological departments of Kitui, Makueni and Kitui was graced by Makueni County Executive Committee Member (CECM) for Agriculture, Mr Nzioki King’ola, County Director of Agriculture Mrs Mary Muteti, and Chief Officer Dr. Martin Mboloi as well as Dr. Romano Kiome, AIFSD Chief of Party, and Dr. Ganga Rao, AIFSD’s DTCs value chain manager.

Dr. Kiome called on the participants to embrace and empower farmers with modern digital agriculture knowledge and skills, noting that with the technological evolution, digital agriculture is the future. “This will not only enhance farming of DTCs where the farmers will be able to easily share and access information on GAPs, PHH and markets but will also attract the youth who have been reluctant to practice farming,” he added.

Dr. Ganga Rao highlighted that AIFSD which builds on achievements made by AVCD, is funded by USAID to a tune of USD 2.2 million for a three-year period. The program is informed by the need to reduce food imports brought about by poor performance of main staple grains like maize, wheat, and rice due to unfavorable weather patterns in ASALs, and to provide enough and more nutritious food, especially for the population in the ASALs.

The training session started with a briefing on sampling techniques for soil, plant and compost, followed by a video demonstration on soil sampling. The session concluded with Q&A round.

This training has empowered the field-level functionaries with the technical know-hows of soil and plant sampling. This will help CRAL deliver accurate testing results and support the farmers with timely interventions. Trained women will be collecting around 2000 samples every year from the beneficiary farmers under the aegis of ICRISAT-NAANDI partnership.