Annual Group Meet of Spring, Summer and Rice Fallow Pulses

3^rd-4^th November 2023, Mumbai

The Annual Group meeting of the ‘Spring, Summer and Rice Fallow Pulses and Kharif Rajmash’ was organised at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, from 3rd-4th November 2023.

Dr. T.R. Sharma, Deputy Director General (CS); Dr. Sanjeev Gupta, Assistant Director General (O&P); Dr. Tapan Ghanty, Director, Bioscience Group, BARC; Dr. G.P. Dixit, Director, IIPR; Dr. Aditya Pratap, Project Coordinator, Kharif Pulses; Dr. P.K. Mukherjee, Head, NABTD, BARC,  and about 80 scientists from all over the country were present during the Annual group meeting.

Padmshree, Dr. Ravi B. Grover, Member, Atomic Energy Commission, Emeritus Professor and Founder Director, Homi Bhabha National Institute was the Chief Guest of the meeting. He lauded the efforts of agricultural scientists towards food and nutritional security in the country and expressed a keen interest in developing new collaborations in the area of mutation breeding for the improvement of pulse crops.

Dr. Sharma emphasised the need to induce early vigour, drought tolerance, and terminal heat stress tolerance in spring/summer and rice fallow pulses and underlined the need to establish breeding hubs in designated centres to address this issue. He also desired that modern technologies such as genome editing and marker-assisted breeding should be deployed to improve specific traits.

Dr. Gupta highlighted key areas where focused attention is needed, such as shuttle breeding, multiple stress resistance and promotion of area-specific crops.

Dr. Ghanty informed about the ICAR-BARC collaboration and the need to strengthen it further. 

Dr. Dixit highlighted the need to develop product profiles in mungbean and urdbean and breeding new varieties.

A book on the agricultural technologies developed by BARC, Mumbai was also released at the meet. Four special lectures on the emerging areas of agricultural sciences and technology were also organised. The entire group met with a vow to execute the agenda of AICRP with utmost sincerity and priority.

(Source: ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur)