Hyderabad: Farmers who usually keep their farms fallow after rice cultivation now have another option: a new variety of pigeon pea, toor dal, which can be grown not only during the monsoon (kharif) season but also in the intense heat of summer, where temperatures can rise up to 45º Celsius. This advancement can be a great relief to many farmers who have been constrained by seasonal limitations.
This advancement was achieved by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat), which has developed ICPV 25444, a speed-bred cultivar which matures in 125 days. It has demonstrated remarkable tolerance to high temperatures and the ability to produce higher yields.
The achievement is significant in light of the recent freezing of USAID funding that has affected around eight per cent of Icrisat’s budget. “Some centres in CGIAR (Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centres) are being affected more than Icrisat,” Dr Himanshu Pathak, director-general, Icrisat, told Deccan Chronicle.
He said negotiations were underway with other donors to offset the shortfall, although they are in initial stages. Key funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Central and state governments in India.
Field trials conducted in Karnataka, Odisha, and Telangana have shown that ICPV 25444 can yield up to two tonnes per hectare, outperforming traditional pigeon pea varieties that typically yield between 1 and 1.5 tonnes per hectare.
“Icrisat created the speed-breeding protocol for pigeon pea in 2024. This innovation allows researchers to grow up to four generations of the crop each year, slashing the time needed to develop new varieties from 15 years to just five,” said Dr Stanford Blade, deputy director general for research and innovation.
Dr Prakash Gangashetty, senior scientist for pigeon pea breeding, led the team behind this achievement. “The protocol, developed over a single year, enables rapid crop improvement by growing plants in controlled environments using space-optimised methods. In a 2,250 square-foot facility, we were able to cultivate 18,000 plants per season in four-inch pots, boosting seed generation. Advanced genomic tools, including seed-chipping technology, further accelerated the breeding process,” he said.
“India grows only about three million tonnes of pigeon pea right now, but the country has potential to produce five million tonnes. To bridge that gap, it ends up importing the rest, which costs nearly $800 million every year. This variety can help us overturn this import need,” said DG Dr Pathak.
The Icrisat team is trying to solve this problem in two ways: one, by developing hybrid pigeon pea varieties that give better yields (they call this vertical expansion), and two, by encouraging farmers to grow the crop outside its usual kharif season (horizontal expansion).
Scientists said the new cultivar could improve farmers’ profitability by up to Rs 20,000 per hectare. Farmers participating in trials have expressed satisfaction with the new variety. “No diseases or pests were observed in our field. We are happy and plan to grow more next summer,” said Gururaj Kulkarni, a farmer involved in the trials.
The variety also shows strong resistance to major diseases such as phytophthora blight, a common issue during high rainfall in the kharif season. According to Dr Mamta Sharma, senior scientist in plant pathology, the absence of rain in summer cultivation helps avoid key biotic stresses altogether.
Pigeon pea has another benefit: being a legume crop, it naturally adds nitrogen to the soil, which helps future crops. “This is a big deal for areas where rice is grown on over 12 million hectares. Usually, after rice is harvested, those fields stay empty. But this new variety can be planted in that fallow land,” said Dr Pathak. “And to be clear, this variety is not genetically modified. It was developed through speed breeding, which simply hastens the growth cycle,” he added.
Dr Pathak added that the variety also helps in saving water. “We use 25 irrigations to grow rice in Punjab. This pigeon pea requires only six to eight, depending on soil type. That’s a huge reduction in water use. In fact, in this cycle, we used only one irrigation as it was raining so often,” he said.
“In Telangana, pigeon pea is traditionally cultivated on about 45,000 to 50,000 hectares. We are looking at districts like Tandur, Warangal, Vikarabad, Mahbubnagar, Nalgonda, Sangareddy, and Medak, where this variety could bring in positive results,” said Dr Gangashetty.
The development has been supported by the Union department of agriculture and cooperation; the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), of the Odisha government; Karnataka State Seed Corporation and the Indian Council of Agriculture Research.
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