'Adequate funds to be provided for crop improvement works'

Adequate funds would be provided for crop improvement works on Pigeonpea, Mung bean and Urad bean, a senior official in Indian Council for Agriculture Research said today.
These three crops are climate resilient and very important for achieving nutrition security and cropping system sustainability in India, B B Singh, Assistant Director General, ICAR, Delhi, said while inaugurating the three-day Annual Group Meeting on Pigeonpea, Mungbean and Uradbean at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, here.
The country needed to increase the area and production under pulses and ICAR would provide necessary fund allocation for crop improvement works.
However, Singh cautioned that those centres which failed to perform in field trials would be withdrawn from the ICAR projects.

Indian Institute of Pulses Research (Kanpur) Director N Nadarajan said 80 per cent of the pulse crop in India was grown under rainfed conditions.
India has achieved 18.10 million tonnes of pulses production in 2012-13, he said.