Pulses Production: Status, Trends and Strategies in India

Abstract

Pulses are an important ingredient in the vegetarian diet of Indian masses. These are important because these have a high value for maintaining the optimal blood sugar levels and also restoring energy over a long period of time after the meals because the carbohydrates provided by pulses are released slowly as compared to cereals. In general, pulses are one of the most sustainable crops as it utilizes only 359 liter of water to produce one kg of pulses as compared to 1,802 liter for soybeans and 3,071 liters for groundnut. They play a significant role in contributing to soil quality by fixing nitrogen in the soil. India is one of the largest producer as well as consumer of a wide variety of pulses that is dominated by the tropical and sub-tropical crops such as chickpea, black gram, pigeon pea, green gram, lentil & so on. In this study, analysis has been done to help out the researcher and policy makers to take decisions regarding future initiatives and programs. In India during 2017-18 pulses were grown over an area of 29.99 million hectare producing 25.23 million tones with yield of 841 kg / per hectare. The cropping area of pulses in Haryana as compared to India is almost decreasing. The trend of contribution of pulses by Haryana at national level is also decreasing which reduces from 0.10 million tons in 2000-01 to 0.06 million tons in 2016-17. In India, about 5.63 to 10.90 percent share of food grains production is of pulses. The percentage growth rate in the cropped area as well as in production of total pulses in India shows much fluctuation but serious downfall in case of Haryana. The present study tries to review and analyze the current policy environment and suggests ways and means to improve the pulses production scenario in the country and Haryana as well. It advocates the need to diversify from cereal–based cropping systems to pulses-based cropping system with certain policy decisions like crop diversification, improving seed replacement rate, improved crop production techniques etc. This paper analyses status of pulse crop in India as a whole and Haryana in particular along with paradigm shift required in policy decision, pulse research, technology generation & dissemination, commercialization along with capacity building of farmers and frontier areas of research & extension.