Lok Sabha Question No. 2151 (UNSTARRED), answered on 2023-03-14
Subject: Flood/Drought tolerant Seeds
Ministry: AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE
Asked by: Jual Oram

## GOVERNMENT OF INDIA MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE

## DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

## LOK SABHA UNSTARRED QUESTION NO. 2151

TO BE ANSWERED ON 14 th  MARCH, 2023

## FLOOD/DROUGHT TOLERANT SEEDS

2151. SHRI JUAL ORAM:

Will the Minister of AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE क ृ षि और षकसान कल्याण मंत्री be pleased to state:

- (a)  whether  the  Government  has  any  plan  to  invest/promote  seed  research  to  tackle  climate change related cropping issues and droughts to help the farmers in future and if so, the details thereof;
- (b) whether flood/drought tolerant seeds are being developed in our country and if so, the details thereof; and
- (c) the efforts that the Government has taken to improve the per acre yield of various crops?

## ANSWER

## THE MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMERS WELFARE क ृ षि और षकसान कल्याण मंत्री (SHRI NARENDRA SINGH TOMAR)

- (a) and (b): Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) through its 57 Institutes and 40 All India  Coordinated  Research  Projects/  All  India  Network  Projects  operating  in  more  than  930 centres across 45 State/Central Agricultural Universities is promoting research on improvement of seed/varieties. In addition, eight special projects viz., ICAR -National Innovations on Climate Resilient  Agriculture (NICRA),  four  Consortium  Research  Projects,  Incentivizing  Research  in Agriculture  Project,  Network  Project  on  Translational  Genomics  in  Crop  Plants  and  National Agricultural Science Fund are also focussing on climate change research in seed varieties.

To tackle climate change related cropping issues and droughts ICAR has developed more than  7200  high  yielding  varieties  of  field  and  horticultural  crops  since  1969  through  National Agricultural Research System (NARS). During 2014-15 to 2022-23, NARS under the aegis of ICAR  has  released  2681  high  yielding/  stress  tolerant  varieties/  hybrids  of  field  (2279)  and horticultural crops (402) for different agro-climatic conditions, of which 407 varieties have been bred  through  precision  phenotyping  tools  specially  for  extreme  climate  including  flood/  water submergence/  water  logging  tolerance  (73),  drought/moisture  stress/  water  stress  tolerance (220), salinity/ alkalinity/ sodic soils tolerance (52), heat stress/ high temperature tolerance (49) and cold/ frost/ winter chilling tolerance (13).

- (c): India has made a commendable progress in improving per unit yield of various food grains by  deploying  the  high  yielding  climate  resilient  varieties  through  enhanced  seed  and  varietal replacement rates, which has resulted in increasing the overall productivity level of food grains by 4.57 times (2386 kg/ha) during 2020-21 as compared to 522 kg/ha during 1950-51. Since 2014, average productivity in most of the crops has increased significantly as a result  of which total production of food grains has increased to 6.4 times from 50.8 million tonnes in 1950-51 to 323.6 million tonnes during 2022-23 (2 nd  advance estimates).

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