Lessons from soybean: Time to broaden India's biotech push in crops

India needs to develop its biotechnology capacity for crops like soybean as it has done for rice

More than half the vegetable oil India consumes is imported. This requires paying dollars equivalent to Rs 1.31 trillion. The high dependence on import is not only turning costlier but it is also making the country vulnerable to foreign sources of supply and fluctuations in global prices. However, India has the potential to be self-sufficient in edible oil and that will raise the incomes of our farmers.

 

Attempts have been made since the late 1980s to achieve a breakthrough in oilseeds production to improve self-sufficiency in edible oil, but import dependence has only increased. Once again the “National Mission on Edible Oil” has been launched by the present government to attain Atmanirbharata in edible oil. 

 

Soybean, which occupies the largest area among all oil crops in India and the world, offers interesting lessons. It represents a unique case of agricultural diversification and transformation, using an exotic germplasm, especially in rainfed agriculture. Till the early 1970s, soybean in India was grown in just less than 30,000 hectares — in the hills of Uttarakhand (then part of Uttar Pradesh), Himachal Pradesh, and the Northeast. Today, it is the most important oil crop in India, accounting for 34 per cent of the area under oil crops and 23 per cent of domestic vegetable oil, and more than 50 per cent of oil cake/meal production. The journey of soybean epitomises great success in some respects and a great failure in others. Both have a strong bearing on the heavy dependence of India on the import of edible oil. These are evident from the following facts.

• Soybean started spreading in India with the introduction of the Barag variety in the early 1970s. It was brought from Mississippi, United States (US), by scientists of Illinois University. The area under soybean reached a reasonable base of 100,000 hectares in the mid-1970s and kept increasing in leaps and bounds. The area crossed 13 million hectares in 2022-23, and it is still rising. With 99 per cent of the area being rainfed, it did not put any stress on water resources.

• Soybean output increased from 130,000 tonnes during the mid-1970s to 13.6 million tonnes during 2021-22 to 2023-24, ie more than 100 times increase in less than five decades. Production doubled every four years between 1975-76 and 1999-2000.

• No crop in India has increased so much in less than 50 years after reaching a comparable base. Such examples are rare even abroad and almost absent in a rainfed situation.

• On the flip side, the yield of soybean in the country has remained flat and fluctuated around one tonne per hectare for 45 years. It rose above 1 tonne in some favourable years but again returned to 1 tonne.

• There is another distinguishing feature of soybean that its output witnessed a 100-fold increase in 48 years without any appreciation in productivity, except an initial edge in yield through the introduction of an exotic germplasm.

 

Before the introduction of yellow-seeded soybean from the US, India used to grow black-seeded soybean, whose productivity was less than 300 kg/hectare. The story of yellow soybean in India began in 1963, when scientists from Illinois University brought seeds to India and started working with the G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, and Jawaharlal Nehru Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Jabalpur, to develop soybean varieties suitable for Indian conditions. These improved seeds became available in the early 1970s and their yield on the field was three-four times the yield of traditional black-seeded soybean. After this, the kharif cultivation of soybean spread over large areas in fallow lands in Madhya Pradesh with the average yield close to 1 tonne per hectare.

 

Some other aspects of soybean were as astonishing as its spread. It was introduced in India as a grain legume to address the shortage of pulses, but it turned out to be the most important oil crop in the country. Soybean defied the imagination of planners and scientists, who thought it would become popular in the plains of the Ganga but it moved to central India and later to Maharashtra. At present, Madhya Pradesh accounts for 46 per cent of the area under soybean and 39 per cent of production and Maharashtra is the highest in production with a 44 per cent share and has almost the same area under soyabean cultivation as Madhya Pradesh.

 

Productivity has not gone up only because varieties developed by using the germplasm of soybean from the US were far superior in yield and value than coarse cereals, pulses, cotton, and other oilseed crops in rainfed conditions. This superiority continues, leading to a shift in area from other rainfed crops to soybean.

 

The soybean experience has important messages and also a few questions that deserve attention. What role did domestic research & development (R&D) play after the initial introduction and adaptation of exotic soybean seeds in the 1970s, which brought a big one-time jump in yield? Domestic agricultural R&D has at best ensured sustaining productivity by checking any decline in yield over time. However, it is baffling that the National Agricultural Research System could not bring any improvement in yield in 50 years despite reasonable expenditure.

 

But the rest of the world has moved on. In the mid-1970s the yield in the US was two times and the world average was 60 per cent higher than that of India. The recent yield of soybean in the US and Brazil is 3.3 times and the world yield is 2.6 times the soybean yield in India.

 

The main reasons for stagnant productivity are: One, an absence of collaboration and germplasm transfer from US universities after the initial introduction; two, India’s policy of a ban on genetically modified (GM) food crops (GM varieties now occupy 75 per cent of the area under soybean in the world); and three, the inability of national agricultural research systems to achieve any breakthrough in soybean productivity. If the soybean yield in India had kept pace with that in the US or Brazil, our production would have doubled and India’s import dependence would have been 40 per cent lower than what it is now.

 

The success of soybean in large-scale area diversification, even in the absence of any yield gain, offers some useful lessons. A superior germplasm is powerful in shaping the growth trajectory of any crop. This can be achieved through the introduction, selections, and tools of biotechnology. India needs to develop its capacity in biotechnology in crops like soybean as it has done for rice. There is also a need for global scouting and securing a superior germplasm for crops like soybean through collaboration with global research institutes which have a rich collection of such germplasm. The world has achieved success in oilseed crops through GM varieties and half of such area is under soybean. This is a ready and promising option for raising oilseed production and achieving  Atmanirbharata in edible oil, but it requires a consensus and preparedness of the nation to adopt and accept GM oil crops.

 

Another lesson from soybean success is to exploit the option of area expansion. More than half the agricultural land in the country is used only in one season and remains unused most of the time of the year. Oilseeds can easily fit into the crop sequence in such areas without affecting the area under other crops. Raising cropping intensity in major states to the national average of 155 per cent can improve self-sufficiency in edible oil by 30 per cent. A combination of yield enhancement and increase in crop intensity, as suggested above, is the way forward for Atmanirbharata in edible oil.             

The writer is member, NITI Aayog. The views here are personal