Governor Shekhar Dutt inaugurated the two-day national conclave centred on ‘MUllaRP’, the Rabi group of pulses crops, organised under the joint aegis of Indira Gandhi Agriculture University Raipur and Indian Council of Agriculture Research New Delhi, here on Tuesday.
Addressing the agriculture scientists came from different parts of the country, Governor Dutt said that large part of Indian meal was pulses.
At the time of independence, there were shortage of foodgrain in the country, but because of the prudent thoughts of the policy makers agriculture and allied areas have been promoted and green revolution came in the country.
As a result, not only the shortage of foodgrain had been solved, but there were over production of foodgrain, in the country, he added.He said, “without pulses our meals would not be balanced, but our achievement in this sector is less. In the production of pulses our status is at 98th place in the world,” he added.
The governor said that India has 32 per cent of the total pulses crops of the world, but its production was only 23 per cent. In 1950, the per person pulses consumption was 51 gram, which has been reduced to 20 to 30 gram now, he added.
While presiding over the function, agriculture minister Chandrashekhar Sahu said that pulses crops have special importance in rabi crops. As far as India and Chhattisgarh, the need of the hour was to search for new and extensive probabilities of pulses crops, he added.
Director of Indian Institute of Pulse Research Kanpur Dr S Natrajan said that pulses production in the country has been increased to 14.5 lakh tonne during the last three years, but despite of that pulses production in the country was much low.
Vice chancellor of Indira Gandhi Agriculture University Raipur Dr SK Patil, in his welcome speech, said that an estimated quantity of about 23.88 lakh tonne would be needed for the domestic consumption of the country up to 2015. To fulfil this need, an annual increase of 4.2 per cent should be done in the production of pulses, he added.