ICRISAT & Sustainable Development Goals

Reducing poverty, hunger and malnutrition in the dryland tropics are core to ICRISAT’s mission. Our work across the entire value chain – from improved seeds and technologies to post-harvest agri-business and facilitating market access – helps raise incomes of smallholder farmers while ensuring food and nutrition security.

Examples

Nutrition is an important aspect of our work. ICRISAT works along the whole value chain to integrate nutritional aspects from improving the degraded soils of the drylands to improve crop nutrition, breeding for higher nutrient levels through to working with communities to cook nutritious foods.

Examples

• Smart Food like millets, sorghum and legumes that ICRISAT specializes in are ‘good for you’ as they are naturally highly nutritious with high levels of calcium, iron, zinc and other minerals. Finger millet has3 times more calcium than milk. Pearl millet has the highest folic acid content among cereals and is recommended for pregnant women. Millets have a low glycemic index which helps manage blood glucose levels and prevents diabetes.
• Chickpea and pigeonpea are high in iron, manganese and zinc with significant levels of magnesium and phosphorus.
• To combat anaemia in women and children ICRISAT developed the first bio-fortified pearl millet variety – released in India as Dhanashakti – which is 7% higher in iron and zinc.
• A study funded by HarvestPlus, based in Maharashtra, India, has found that of the children (12-16 years) who were iron deficient at the beginning of the study, 40% of the children consuming regular pearl millet and 64% of the children consuming high-iron pearl millet were iron replete at the end of the study. (Journal of Nutrition).

• ICRISAT is working along the value chain from crop research to training women groups on use of sorghum for household consumption. Such trainings have been conducted across Nigeria and Kenya.
• Long-term studies have been conducted on understanding nutrition pathways, factors influencing women’s nutrition at the household level, tracking changing dietary patterns and their effects on nutrition, etc. These studies were conducted since 1977 across selected villages in India.

Providing vocational and technical training to women and youth is crucial to our work of strengthening value chains. Making agriculture profitable enables smallholder farmers to provide quality education for their children.

Examples

• Around 5,000 youth trained in agri-business.
• Around 45,000 participants benefited from other trainings and exposure visits.

ICRISAT’s research framework is inclusive as it seeks to incorporate the voices of women, youth and the marginalized to inform its research strategy. Acting as a catalyst we help rural communities develop their own solutions while ensuring women, youth and marginalized are empowered to participate and lead solutions.

Examples

• Having 50% women on watershed committees in India has ensured that their concerns are addressed in decision making. It has also empowered them to have an equal say in community affairs.
• In Africa about 25% of the watershed members are women. Plans are in place to increase the participation of women in new watersheds.
• More than 27 farmer seed producers associations, totaling 870 members (640 women and 230 men) in the Dosso region of Niger have been working with ICRISAT through the Tropical Legumes II project, since 2007, to evolve and develop:
• Access to modern varieties
• Training in seed production technologies
• Access to inputs (such as varieties, good quality seed and fertilizers) and production market for groundnut seed by linking women seed producers to the market.
• Extra-early pearl millet variety grown in Rajasthan, India, generated 900,000 days of employment each year, 45% of whom were women.
• In Zimbabwe, ICRISAT worked to develop functional markets where women could sell their goats. Using a combination of on-farm as well as market interventions the profitability increased by more than US$10 per animal. Women used the income to pay for education and health expenses and as a buffer against farming risks.

Millet and sorghum ready-to-eat snacks promoted by women entrepreneurs Two product concepts ‘Healthy Snack’ and ‘Smart Brkfast’ based on sorghum and millets were developed by the NutriPlus Knowledge (NPK) program of ICRISAT Agribusiness and Innovation Platform (AIP). Each concept has been scaled up to commercial ventures involving women entrepreneurs. The ‘Healthy Snack’ concept has seen the commercialization of flavored sorghum and finger millet extruded products by Indmillet foods™ (involving three women entrepreneurs) under the brand name Rigdam® (http://rigdam.com/).The ‘Smart Brkfast’ concept has seen the commercialization of sorghum and pearl millet based breakfast cereal by Mathesis Engineers Pvt. Ltd. Food Product Division (involving a women entrepreneur) under the brand name Navya™.

Agriculture uses the most water and working in the drylands we work in the most water scarce areas which have the most critical need for solutions to improve water availability. On-farm and off-farm water harvesting and management coupled with treating wastewater for agriculture and integrated watershed management is helping improve water availability for farmers.

Examples

• ICRISAT’s initial work in Kothapally watershed in India has been scaled up across the state of Karnataka, India. Improved water availability has increased crop yields by 20-66% and resulted in an agricultural growth of more than 5% per annum since 2009.
• The Yewol watershed in Ethiopia has led to a 5-fold increase in the irrigated area and reduced drudgery for women as water is now available on farm.
• We partner with the corporate sector in India as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to rejuvenate watersheds, harvest rainwater to improve water availability for communities and enhance water use efficiency. These efforts have increased groundwater levels, improved crop productivity, enabled farmers to move to high-value crops and increased fodder availability which in turn increased milk production. These benefits have increased farmers’ incomes.

• Treatment and management of waste water not only reduces freshwater demand in agriculture but also helps in preventing groundwater contamination and preserves the water quality of downstream water bodies. We are working with a host of partners, both private sector and national research organizations, in India to find efficient ways of treating both industrial as well as domestic waste water.

Dryland crops such as sorghum have the potential to provide a clean and reliable source of energy. Sweet sorghum can be turned into biofuel at a low cost while addressing food security concerns of converting agricultural land to produce bio-fuel.

Examples

• Sweet sorghum can be grown in a range of soil and environmental conditions with limited water and nutrients.
• No food-fuel trade-off as grain can be used as food while stalk juice and bagasse goes for ethanol production.
• Biofuel from sweet sorghum costs less than biofuel from non-grain feedstock, while other parts of the plant are useful to farmers as animal feed.
• Reduction in carbon emission (80-90%) with sweet sorghum ethanol compared with fossil fuels.
• Farmers have more income opportunities by cultivating sweet sorghum.

Farming and associated non-farm activities are a key driver of livelihoods in rural areas of India and Africa. Additionally engaging women and youth in livelihood opportunities is critical to our work. Agri-business has the potential to not only benefit farmers through value addition but also attract youth to agriculture.

Examples

ICRISAT’s Agribusiness and Innovation Platform has been working to encourage entrepreneurship among youth by supporting agribusiness start-ups in the domain of food processing, seed business, farming and agri-biotechnology.

Some impacts so far:

• 74 agribusiness start-ups incubated
• Over 900 jobs created through start-up clients
• Over 800,000 farmers benefited by products and value-addition services offered by clients
• Reduction in carbon emission (80-90%) with sweet sorghum ethanol compared with fossil fuels.
• Facilitated US$ 13.2 million as investment to start-ups
• Facilitated commercialization of 331 agrotechnologies for Indian institutions; 1218 ventures provided incubation support in these institutions.

Digital Agriculture enables farmers access information, finance and markets to minimize farming risks and move up the value chain. Innovative seed financing models are helping farmers in Malawi reap better dividends from agriculture.

Examples

ICRISAT’s Agribusiness and Innovation Platform has been working to encourage entrepreneurship among youth by supporting agribusiness start-ups in the domain of food processing, seed business, farming and agri-biotechnology.

Some impacts so far:

• In Mali using drones for land mapping has helped strengthen land tenure systems thus benefiting farmers. Coupled with an android-based app this also helps them optimize resource use.
• In Malawi an innovative model, allows farmers to place part of their harvest in a local warehouse in return for inventory credit which they can utilize for post-harvest expenses.

The Green SIM innovation pushes relevant information to farmers on their mobiles, while the Green Phablet allows access to a database which can provide customized recommendations to farmers.

• 40,000 farmers in 171 villages bought the Green SIM in the first 6 months of the pilot initiative generating additional income for women and youth working as info-entrepreneurs.
• 10 times more effective per dollar spent through classical approaches in converting farmers to better farming practices and technologies.
• Info-entrepreneurs emerged as new professionals to strengthen the existing agricultural extension system.

Our work in urban wastewater recycling for use in agriculture reduces the burden on civic infrastructure, is environment friendly and promotes safe and healthy agriculture in peri-urban areas which are fast emerging as high growth centers.

Examples

• Initial work in treating domestic as well as industrial waste water for use in agriculture is showing encouraging results.
• Our model comprising decentralized wastewater treatment system and reuse of treated wastewater in agriculture provides a solution for safe reuse of domestic wastewater at community scale.
• The implementation and management of the decentralized wastewater treatment system and reuse of the treated wastewater can be handled by community based organization (women self-help groups) as an income generating activity.
• Coupling wastewater treatment along with integrated water management is not only helpful in enhancing agriculture production and income of smallholder farmers but also in improving water quality of groundwater wells and downstream water bodies.

The core principle underlying ICRISAT’s work is sustainable natural resource management. Reducing the carbon and water footprint and improving soil, water and other natural resources is an integral component of our research.

Examples

• Smart food like millets, sorghum and legumes are ‘good for the planet’ as they have a low carbon and water footprint.
• Incorporating pulses in the cropping cycle can reduce the carbon footprint by 24 to 37%. Pulses avoid the use of nitrogen fertilizer as they fix nitrogen in the soil. The carbon footprint of nitrogen fertilizers is 7.5 times more than other fertilizers.
• Pulses require less water and they extract water from shallower depths leaving deep soil water for the following crop. Pulses effectively increase the water use efficiency of the entire crop cycle.
• ICRISAT is also working on increasing water availability through rainwater harvesting and developing low-cost technologies to make wastewater suitable for irrigation.

The dryland areas of the world are increasing under the impact of climate change. For e.g. more than 3 million ha have become semi-arid over the last 40 years in India and 40% of the land grown to maize will not be suitable for this by 2030. This will have hugely disruptive implications for African livelihoods and lives. Focusing on drylands is critical and ICRISAT is providing science-backed climate-smart solutions to millions of smallholder farmers in the drylands to build their resilience to climate change shocks.

Examples

• Dryland crops are climate-smart crops as they can grow in poor soils, withstand drought, high temperatures and require less water. High-end genomic research is being deployed to improve the desirable traits in these crops to further withstand climate change shocks.
• Apart from crop research, ICRISAT has developed a pool of climate-smart agricultural practices that can improve resilience of smallholder farmers in the drylands. Various interventions are being carried out to build farmers’ resilience to the impacts of climate change such as:
  • Varieties and hybrids adapted to higher temperatures, water stress and pests and diseases;
  • Improving water management and water use efficiency;
  • Diversifying cropping patterns and livelihoods
  • Mitigation measures such as carbon sequestration and conversation agriculture
• Climate modeling work is providing farmers a range of tools – from advisories of what to grow in the next season in case of delayed or poor rains in Andhra Pradesh, India, to adaptive packages for farmers to mitigate climate change effects in Zimbabwe.
• Across Africa and India we are working to develop climate smart villages.
• Early maturing, resilient varieties of millets and legumes help farmers escape terminal drought and ensure a good harvest. More than 40 varieties and hybrids of legumes have been released in Africa and India over the last 5 years which will help farmers withstand climate change shocks.

Our genebank being maintained over the last 4 decades is a critical part of our strategy to protect against loss of biodiversity due to desertification and land degradation. Genebanks in India, Niger, Kenya and Zimbabwe hold more than 120,000 germplasm accessions from 144 countries.

Examples

• More than 1.4 million samples of nearly 100,600 germplasm accessions shared with collaborators in 145 countries.
• Identified germplasm with new sources of tolerance to drought, salinity, heat and water logging, disease resistance, improved agronomic traits (early-maturity, high yield, seed size) and quality (oil, protein, iron, zinc, calcium).
• National partners have released more than 800 varieties in 79 countries utilizing germplasm and breeding lines from ICRISAT.
• ICRISAT has repatriated 41,796 national germplasm accessions to the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), India.

Overcoming poverty and food insecurity is a key element to ensuring peace and this is the core work we do in the rural areas through making farming sustainable and profitable. Our work also involves building effective, transparent and accountable community-level institutions for building inclusive and just societies. We also work closely with community and government institutions and provide formal capacity building.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are the cornerstone of our work. We work with governments, donor agencies, national research agencies, civil society organizations, private sector, farmers groups, etc., to realize a sustainable future for all.

Examples