Self-sufficiency in pulses a realistic goal FARM VIEW

The mantra to boost output is to grow pulses on larger areas and ensure remunerative prices to farmers

Can India be self-sufficient in pulses? The answer is “yes, it can”. And, more importantly, it can do so with the technology that is already available. Misgivings on this count stem partly from the constant shortage of these protein-rich grains and partly from the government’s frantic bids to get into long-term agreements for imports or captive production of pulses abroad for shipment to India. Imports are, no doubt, imperative at this stage to meet the immediate consumption needs, but if these become part of the standard strategy to depress domestic prices, it would prove counterproductive by discouraging local production.

The mantra to boost pulses output — and, hence, availability — is to grow pulses on larger areas and ensure remunerative prices to farmers. Since agricultural land is limited and cannot be stretched further, the only way to enlarge pulses acreage is to include these crops into the existing cropping systems without displacing the regular crops. This is possible in two ways. One, by utilising the time gap between harvesting and planting of kharif and rabi crops to raise quick crops of pulses. And two, by growing pulses in “rice fallows” — the lands left uncultivated after harvesting paddy in kharif. Pulses are efficient users of water and nutrients and produce more crop per drop. As an added advantage, they make the land more fertile by fixing atmospheric nitrogen into the soil. However, necessary support services and inputs, including seeds, fertilisers and know-how, among others, will need to be made available to farmers.

Farm research centres, including the Kanpur-based Indian Institute of Pulses Research, have successfully reduced the growing period of key pulse crops to facilitate their inclusion in the multiple cropping systems. The duration of chickpea (chana), for instance, has been shortened from 135 days to 100 days and that of lentil (masoor) from 140 days to 120 days. Mungbean can now be harvested in less than two months after planting. The volume and weight of grains of several legumes have been increased to ensure higher per-hectare yield and better price realisation. Transgenic strains of crops like pigeon pea (arhar) and gram (chana) are in advance stages of development. These can reduce losses due to pests.

Shorter duration mung varieties can easily fit into the rice-wheat cropping sequence on irrigated land in the highly fertile Indo-Gangetic belt. This crop can be sown either in the spring season (between March 15 and 25) after harvesting mustard or potato; or in the summer season (April 10 to 15) after cutting wheat. The mung crop will vacate the fields well in time for sowing kharif paddy in June-July. Growers can bag around 10 to 12 quintals of grains per hectare from this crop, against the current average productivity of pulses of barely 7.5 quintals. Even if half of the area under wheat-rice sequence is devoted to grow early-maturing pulses, much of the supply gap in pulses can be bridged.

Faster-growing pulses will be handy also for cultivation on rice fallows. According to the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (Naas), as much as 11.65 million hectares of rice lands in different states are often left untilled after growing paddy in kharif. Most of these lands can be put under pulses, such as masoor, mung, urad, lathyrus (khesari dal) and peas, in states like Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Assam. More lands can be made available for growing pulses by promoting relatively shorter-duration paddy strains which mature by SeptemberOctober. This will help raise good crops of masoor or chana with residual soil moisture. The rice-masoor cropping system is especially suited for rice fallows in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, Naas maintains.

However, an important point to note is that the energy requirement of leguminous crops is relatively higher compared to cereals. For, while cereals need nutrition chiefly to manufacture carbohydrates, pulses need it to synthesise carbohydrates as well as energy-rich proteins. The application of some quantities of fertilisers to the pulse crops can, therefore, make all the difference to their output.