IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fpr/csispn/17.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Sticky seeds: Why old seeds continue to dominate the rice-wheat agriculture in Eastern India

Author

Listed:
  • Kishore, Avinash
  • Singh, Vartika
  • Gupta, Shweta

Abstract

Preliminary findings of a joint ICAR-IFPRI survey covering more than 2,000 farmers from 40 districts of Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh and Odisha show that the adoption of improved varieties of rice and wheat seeds is slow in the region. The average age of wheat varieties grown in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh is 25-30 years. A 2016 study of varietal adoption of wheat by CIMMYT and the Michigan State University (MSU) in Bihar also reports similar findings (Ray and Maredia, 2016). The average age of non-hybrid rice varieties grown in the region is around the same. The situation is even worse for pulses where landraces of unknown origins dominate the cropped area. More than 90% of pulse growers in our sample in Bihar and Odisha could not recall the names of the seed varieties they had sown. The two state governments are implementing programs with subsidies, extension and participatory seed production programs to popularize rice and wheat varieties that are less than 10 years old and pulse varieties that are less than 15 years old. The IFPRI-ICAR survey shows that these programs have had limited impact. Rice and wheat together cover more than two-thirds of the gross cropped area (GCA) in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh and rice alone accounts for 46% of GCA in Odisha. Why is the adoption of improved seeds so slow for the main crops in these states?

Suggested Citation

  • Kishore, Avinash & Singh, Vartika & Gupta, Shweta, 2020. "Sticky seeds: Why old seeds continue to dominate the rice-wheat agriculture in Eastern India," CSISA project notes 17, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    • Handle: RePEc:fpr:csispn:17
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifpri.org/cdmref/p15738coll2/id/133712/filename/133923.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kishore, Avinash & Singh, Vartika, 2021. "Seeds, Water, and Markets to Increase Wheat Productivity in Bihar, India," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315022, International Association of Agricultural Economists.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fpr:csispn:17. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ifprius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.