“The evidence of climate collapse is clear, and its impact on agriculture and food security is extensive,” said Professor Rajeev Varshney, the research project director of the International Semi-Arid Tropical Crops Research Institute (ICRISAT) accelerated crop improvement project.
Varshney has been spending a lot of time researching legume crops, especially chickpeas, dating back to 2005.He told Ecologist: “In a constantly changing climate, legume crops such as chickpeas have great potential to help marginalized groups.”
Chickpeas are an inexpensive source of protein, micronutrients, and fiber, and are of special significance to vegetarians and Asian and African countries—approximately 75% of chickpeas are grown in these countries.
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Variety
However, Varshney warned, “With the increasing frequency of heat waves, water shortages, unpredictable floods and droughts, crop production and productivity have been negatively affected, just like anything else.”
Although this crop is important in Asia and Africa, until 2005, attention to legume crops such as chickpeas was still negligible.
ICRISAT’s team became the first team in the world to explore this crop to find varieties with climate resilience Productivity increased by 10%. In addition, the development time of this species has been cut by half, and the use of advanced technology has accelerated the research speed.
“It is important not only to make the agricultural climate smart, but to make it available to marginalized people as soon as possible,” Varshney added.
The typical development of any new crop variety may take 8 to 10 years to reach the farmers from the laboratory. ICRISAT’s research aims to reduce this time.
Atlas
India is the largest producer and consumer of chickpeas. The crop can be grown in almost all areas of the country. However, regional differences still exist.
With the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1960s, states in northern India with good soil moisture and water sources are more inclined to produce crops such as rice and wheat. This shifted chickpea production to semi-arid areas in central and southern India.
“As chickpea production requires sufficient soil moisture, it is difficult for farmers to maintain crop yields despite repeated droughts, heat waves and climate change,” Varshney said.
Although India is the largest producer of chickpeas, its production has not increased much compared to other crops.
In 2005, chickpeas caught the attention of ICRISAT scientists and they began to map the genetics of chickpeas.
Technology
Experts collected information on various varieties of chickpea grown in many parts of the world. Collected plant strains from more than sixty countries.
This became one of the earliest steps in the development of climate-adapted chickpea varieties.This The ICRISAT gene bank has more than 20,000 germplasm or chickpea strains, which have a variety of genetic characteristics and a series of agronomic traits.
“Once we have access to genetic information, the process will become shorter,” Varshney added.
Select genes that give plants greater drought tolerance, and then grow them to produce the desired chickpea seeds.
This method is called genetic marker technology, which is different from traditional methods and other technologies such as genetic modification of plant varieties.
Cultivated
“The traditional breeding process to cultivate drought tolerance is quite extensive, expensive and uncertain,” said Dr. Chellapilla Bhardwaj, a scientist at the Indian Agricultural Research Council, who developed drought-tolerant chickpea varieties in cooperation with ICRISAT.
Conventional breeding is a multi-step trial planting process, in which two plants are cultivated, and then the best performing plant is selected based on the yield of the trial stage.
“There are other problems. If there are unpredictable rains, breeders will not be able to conduct drought selection trials under suitable conditions. Long-term season generation progress is also impossible,” Bhardwaj added.
Genetic marker technology eliminates any unexpected challenges caused by weather and climate change. The development of drought-resistant seeds of chickpea would otherwise take more than eight years, and it took only three years to complete.
Rao Gulab Singh Lodhi, a farmer from Madhya Pradesh, a semi-arid region in central India, planted various chickpeas on a small part of his land during the 2019-2020 season.
develop
He says Ecologist“My peers told me about this new chickpea variety. I was curious and got some seeds just for experimentation. I am not only satisfied with the production and quality, but also very satisfied.”
Lodhi cultivated 55-60 kilograms of seeds from 0.5 grams of experimental product. In addition to distributing these seeds to local farmers, Lodhi also plans to grow chickpeas on his 20 acres of land in the coming season. He estimated that he would be able to get about 150 quintals per acre.
Although the importance of this crop to food and nutrition is well known in India and several African countries, the crop has not been fully studied before ICRISAT’s work.
Varshey said: “Crops like this are not very important or popular in the Western world-so they have not attracted enough research attention.”
Chickpeas are called Orphan crop: Legume crops like chickpeas are not traded as much in the international market as other crops, and they have not received the same attention in research and development.
food safety
Although India and this study are the first of its kind, chickpeas are no exception. “Advanced technologies for producing climate-adaptable crop varieties have been applied to other crops, such as Western rice, vegetables, etc.,” Varshney said.
“However, private companies have limited incentives to invest in open-pollinated crop research. Therefore, public research must be promoted to promote the greater interests of smallholders and marginal farmers in Asia and Africa.
“For a country like India, it is important to accelerate the development of new drought-tolerant varieties-where the impact of climate change is serious and obvious,” Vashni concluded. according to For FAO, climate change will have a disproportionate impact on farmers in poor and developing countries.
Using advanced technologies, such as those used by ICRISAT scientists, high-yield varieties with good climate change ability have great potential to protect farmers from invisible climate challenges, while ensuring food security and nutrition.
This author
Monika is an independent journalist who writes articles about agriculture, sustainability and the environment.Her work is available at Her website withHe is on Twitter @akinom_ladnom.
This article has been published through the Ecologist Writer Fund. We ask readers to donate to cover some authors’ work costs of £200.Please Donate nowYou can learn more about the fund and apply for it, On our website.
