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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | More nutrition in wheat, rice: Is Modi govt up to bio-fortification to move from food to nutritional security? -Ashok Gulati & Ritika Juneja

More nutrition in wheat, rice: Is Modi govt up to bio-fortification to move from food to nutritional security? -Ashok Gulati & Ritika Juneja

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published Published on Oct 17, 2018   modified Modified on Oct 17, 2018
-Financial Express

Grain production plummeted from 89.4 million metric tonnes (MMT) in 1964-65 to 72.4 MMT in 1965-66. India became heavily dependent on PL 480 food aid from US and underwent a ‘ship-to-mouth’ crisis.

October 16 is celebrated as ‘World Food Day’ to mark the creation of United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 1945. It envisions zero world hunger by 2030. Perhaps the occasion is incomplete without remembering Nobel Peace laureate Norman E Borlaug, whose ‘miracle seeds’ of wheat saved over a billion lives from starvation, and who also instituted the ‘World Food Prize’ in 1986, somewhat akin to a Nobel Prize in agriculture. Peeping into the past is important to realise the role of science and technology that paved the way for the ‘Green Revolution’, ensuring food security. Similar innovations in bio-technologies today hold promise to give nutritional security.

Rewind history and recollect that the Bengal Famine (1943) is said to have claimed 1.5 million to 3 million lives due to sheer starvation. India got independence in 1947 with a challenge to feed 330 million people. Situation became grim when India was hit by back to back droughts during the mid-1960s. Grain production plummeted from 89.4 million metric tonnes (MMT) in 1964-65 to 72.4 MMT in 1965-66. India became heavily dependent on PL 480 food aid from US and underwent a ‘ship-to-mouth’ crisis. No wonder, then, that self-sufficiency in food grains became top priority. India imported 18,000 tonnes of semi-dwarf high yielding (HY) wheat—Lerma Rojo and Sonora 64, developed by Borlaug and his team at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), Mexico, that ushered in the Green Revolution in India. Adaptation of imported germplasm to innovate indigenous varieties—like Kalyan, by DS Athwal and Sona by MS Swaminathan—aided the spread of this revolution. Around the same time, HY miracle rice—IR8—developed by Peter Jennings and Henry M Beachell of International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was imported.

About a decade later, improved variety IR36 by Gurdev Khush from IRRI also made inroads into Indian fields. In-house crash breeding programme under All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) produced Padma and Jaya, the first indigenous HY rice varieties that formed the backbone of India’s revolution in rice. Later on, breakthrough in basmati rice came through Pusa Basmati 1121 and 1509 in 2005 through 2013, developed by teams led by VP Singh, AK Singh and KV Prabhu at Indian Agricultural Research Institute. This gave Indian rice more value with less water and 50% higher yields compared to traditional basmati. Singh et al. 2018, estimate the cumulative earnings through exports of Pusa Basmati 1121 and its share of the domestic market to be about $20.8 billion between 2008-2016.

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Financial Express, 15 October, 2018, https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/more-nutrition-in-wheat-rice-is-modi-govt-up-to-bio-fortification-to-move-from-food-to-nutritional-security/1349198/


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