Assessing area, production and return with rice varieties of NRRI, Cuttack

Abstract

The ICAR-National Rice Research Institute (NRRI), Cuttack in Odisha develops varieties and agro-technologies for enhancing and sustaining rice production. The Institute so far has released 133 high-yielding varieties of rice for various ecosystems. Some of the varieties have been very popular among the farmers and even became ruling varieties in some states. However, there are no reports on the area covered by NRRI varieties and its impact on incremental gain in farm income. In the present study, area covered by NRRI varieties in the country during 2017-18 was estimated based on the amount of quality seeds provided to the farmers through various ways: breeder seed indent to the DAC; breeder seed and truthfully-labeled seed supplied by the NRRI farm; participatory seed production by NRRI; seed distributed in various programmes and projects of the Institute; front-line demonstrations and on-farm testing; seed of NRRI varieties supplied by the private entrepreneurs and disseminated from farmers to farmers etc. A validation exercise was conducted to cross-check the estimated areas under NRRI varieties. The analysis showed that currently NRRI varieties cover about 8.0 million ha (Mha) i.e., 18% of rice area of the country. West Bengal has the largest area of 2.26 Mha, followed by Odisha with 2.18 Mha. Total production of rice with NRRI varieties is 27.80 million tons (Mt) with the value of Rs.48,643 crores per annum. Further, incremental production and income with NRRI varieties considering 5% more than the existing popular varieties is estimated to be 1.39 Mt and Rs.2,432 crores per annum, respectively. Over the years, indents of breeder seed (BS) of NRRI varieties have increased considerably indicating growing popularities of NRRI varieties among the farmers in different states.