Demand-driven research

Renowned farm scientist M.S. Swaminathan has pointed out that there is no field where the benefit-cost ratio is as high as in agricultural research and development (R&D). This statement is well borne out in basmati rice, where India’s exports have shot up more than ten-folds in the last ten years. Roughly three-fourths of shipments – expected to touch $ 5 billion this year – are today accounted for by Pusa-1121, a high-yielding variety bred by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) having an annual Plan budget of hardly Rs 60 crore. The same goes for cotton, where a more than two-and-a-half times jump in the country’s output since 2002-03 has been largely courtesy transgenic Bt hybrids. Or for that matter maize production, which has again witnessed a doubling of production in the last 10 years only with the advent of single-cross hybrids.

The common factor in these success stories is not just one of technological intervention translating into higher crop production and farm incomes. It also points to the crucial role of the private sector – be it seed companies, millers, processors or exporters – in ensuring effective transfer of research knowhow in laboratories to farmers’ fields. In Bt cotton and single-cross hybrids, the breeders were themselves mainly private multinationals such as Monsanto and DuPont; they had every reason hence to aggressively ‘push’ these new cropping technologies. But even Pusa-1121 would have remained in the IARI’s research fields, but for a certain basmati exporter who saw its potential and took the initiative to promote the variety, both among farmers and prospective overseas buyers. IARI has since come out with an improved basmati variety Pusa-1509, which also promises to be a successful public sector breeding effort undertaken in close collaboration with the exporting and farming community.

What these examples point to is the need for a totally new public-private-partnership (PPP) framework for agricultural R&D. This could involve the likes of IARI partnering with private seed companies for large-scale production and multiplication of publicly-bred material in order to reach farmers. Such material can even be assigned on an exclusive limited-period basis to make it commercially attractive to the companies concerned. The PPP approach could further extend to sponsored or joint research collaboration with industry – say, breeding of barley varieties yielding more malt for brewing purposes or potatoes with less moisture and sugar content making them amenable for processing and frying. There is lot of hidden value in public sector laboratories, which can be unlocked with research that is more ‘demand-driven’ than being conducted in silos as is the case today. Equally, there is a need to move away from old-style breeding relying on physical observation of plants, to use of molecular biology and marker assisted selection tools for identifying genes coding for specific traits. All this requires huge investments, making the case for collaboration further compelling.

Lift-out: Farm research lends itself naturally to public-private-partnership.

COMMENT NOW