The productivity of various crops and legumes in India are lower than those in the US, Europe and China, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. He said the government was implementing several schemes to address this issue.

In a written reply to a question, Singh said, “Low crop yields cannot be attributed to non-availability of improved technologies but several factors including short growing season, varied agro-climatic conditions and weather extremities.”

Singh said in countries with high productivity, “Crops are largely grown in high input management conditions of long growing period without any stress (moisture, temperature). Further, in India on the same land, farmers grow more than one crop in a year and per day productivity of most of the crops in India is comparable to the global average.” Replying to a query if there was sluggish progress in improving crop yields, the Minister said the Indian Council of Agricultural Research was conducting research on 26 commodities, while several schemes such as National Food Security Mission (NFSM) had been rolled out to increase production and productivity of crops.

He said the government’s crop improvement programmes focussed on development of new crop varieties/hybrids with improved quality and tolerance/resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses and making crops able to withstand weather extremities.

“The recent achievements in the field of sequencing of genomes of important plants and microbes are gainfully utilised,” he added.

He said as a result of implementation of various crop development schemes and programmes, the production and productivity of most of the agricultural crops had increased.

For instance, rice yields had increased from 2,131 kg per hectare in 2006-07 to 2,416 kg per hectare in 2013-14, while wheat yields had gone up from 2,708 kg per hectare to 3,145 kg per hectare in the same period.

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