KANPUR, NEW DELHI, MAY 1: There's a 20-hour power-cut in his lab and Subhajit Datta is trying hard to take it in his stride. For, this 34-year-old scientist at the Government-run Indian Institute of Pulses Research in Kanpur has perhaps one of the toughest jobs in his field: he heads a biotechnology programme to increase the yield of pulses stubbornly stuck in the 500-595 kg/hectare range for more than 20 years.

To put this in perspective, India today has the world’s largest area under pulse cultivation, 22 million hectares, but ranks 138th on the yield index.

So while the government released figures last week congratulating itself on record pulse production of 15.19 million tonnes, what it didn’t mention was that this falls short — as it does each year — of the demand of 17 million tonnes, a demand outpacing supply by almost two million tonnes each year.

Result: retail prices are up almost 30% in the last year forcing many households to cut down on pulse consumption, the only source of protein for many. And making pulse prices the first one to be quoted by political parties beating the inflation drum.

All eyes are on IIPR in the hope the lab may do what policy hasn’t: break the stagnant pulse yield with new varieties.

Datta doesn’t say it but that’s a tall order. For one, the daily power-cuts stall experiments that involve precise temperature and environment settings in which each plant, grown via tissue culture, has to be grafted onto a slightly older plant with stronger roots in a containment facility.

“We have merely a handful of chickpea and mungbean plants in the containment facility, when there should have been thousands,” says Datta. Besides carefully tuned infrastructure, what’s required is trained manual care for which IIPR is scrambling.

Of the 80 scientist posts sanctioned, just over half have been filled up. “My entire batch has gone abroad. I am staying here against the wishes of my parents, wife and friends,” says Datta. And things aren’t going too well: He has just had to send back Rs 96 lakh from his budget because he failed to get clearances for some of his proposals through the labyrinth of government protocol. This means his budget could very well be cut next year.And yet, on paper, IIPR has released as many as 250 varieties of chickpea, pigeonpea, mungbean, lentil, urad and peas since it was set up in 1993.

But why has so little reached the fields? “It is simplistic to look at it that way,” says IIPR director Masood Ali. “The fact is that the pattern of where pulses is grown has changed. In Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, with farmers preferring to grow wheat and rice, the area for pulses has shrunk by 50%. They would rather grow crops that would give them a higher return per hectare....You can say that it’s farmers who are giving step-motherly treatment to pulses.”

Parallel to this has been the steady shift of pulse growth to south and central India. For example, North West plains would grow chickpea across 5.12 million hectares in the ‘70s. Now it is grown in just 2.37 million hectares while the area in the south and central has increased nearly four times.

There, farmers are growing it in combination with other crops, like soyabean in Madhya Pradesh and rice in Andhra Pradesh. In other words, pulses were grown in prime land and now they have shifted to marginal lands, making depressed yields a natural corollary, says Ali.

Curiously, the IIPR lab hasn’t kept pace with this significant change. The centre of pulse cultivation may have shifted south but IIPR has released more varieties for the Northern plains — 13 varieties of chickpea were released for north India, only nine for the rest of the country. Asked to explain this, Shivkumar, head of crop improvement, admits that the lab has been slow in catching up. “Yes, it’s true that we haven’t focused on the south where the new pulse areas are. Because when we started working, these (the north and north west) were the major areas. By the time we had completed our work on new varieties, these areas no longer grew pulses.”

Even when new varieties are released after a decade of work gone into each, few reach the fields. “As a breeder, I feel sad when the states send their indents for the next season. The demand most times is that of obsolete varieties,” said Ali.

One reason is that the complex system of dissemination gets compounded by inefficiencies of the state government machinery. Before each season, the state agriculture department sends “indents” for seeds.

Even today, the state government official fills in the name of varieties long obsolete. Once the state government gets the breeder seed from IIPR, it is supposed to multiply it in its own farms with the help of the State Seed Corporation. This has hardly happened.

“We have begun remedial action. In the National Food Security Mission programme now, we have given our seed production plan,” said Ali, hoping that this will help push down new varieties for farmers.

Looking inwards towards research, Ali points out the fact is that since no developed country consumes pulses the way India does, there has been no investment in research internationally. Then there is the nature of pulse itself. “We started pulse research late. Initially, all research focus was on wheat and rice,” says Shivkumar. “And, intrinsically, the pulse crop is different.”

Unlike for rice and wheat, selection of good varieties in pulses is challenging as the “behaviour of the plant does not depend on genes alone but is different for different environments,” he says. In other words, pulse varieties in use are still most susceptible to insects and weather vagaries.

Pulse crop is also unusual since it does not respond to extra fertilizer or water unlike other foodgrains. Moreover, because it is self-fertilized, it is not easy to make hybrids. The only hybrid that has been developed is that of pigeonpea. However, scientists admit there are some low-hanging fruit that can be plucked as they wait for the big technological breakthrough.