Sharanagouda Patil feels Canada and India share many of the same interests when it comes to agricultural crop research and the two countries should grow something in their labs besides plants.
They should grow a relationship, said Patil, who spoke in Saskatoon Sept. 28 during National Biotechnology Week.
He heads one of the world’s most extensive crop plant research organizations, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute.
The institute supports a food production system that feeds 16 percent of the global population, cropping 460 million acres of Indian land annually.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
“For instance, in India we eat a lot of pulse crops. It’s a daily dietary staple. In Canada, especially in Saskatchewan, you grow a lot of pulse crops,” said Patil, the institute’s director.
“We should be collaborating on more research than we are, when we talk about pulses and cereals,” he said.
Indian agriculture faces drought stress in cereal crops the same as the Canadian Prairies and Patil said researchers from both countries would benefit by harnessing their genomics research capacities together.
Patil cited research that uses genetic marker selection to identify traits of interest as one area where the two countries could work together.
Increasing the yield from dryland pulse crops is another area of plant breeding that Patil said is a priority for Indian agriculture and one where Canadian researchers are international leaders.
“We won’t be shifting to any more acres of pulse production. Rainfall is the biggest factor in our national production. We need to enhance yields for the rain we get,” Patil said, suggesting that five to 10 percent increases in yield are all that is expected in current breeding programs.
In the past decade India has sent mixed messages about its need for pulse crop imports.
India is a large consumer of those commodities, which have seen excessive volatility in price as Indian domestic yields rise and fall and the government added, reduced and then eliminated import duties on the crops.
Bert Vandenberg of the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre is one the world’s leading pulse crop breeders. He said a consistent Indian policy on the importation of pulse crops is necessary to create improved collaboration with Canadian researchers.
A steady policy would send appropriate market signals to producers that would help stabilize Canadian acreage and the international price, he added.
Pete Desai, an agricultural biotechnology researcher in Alberta, agreed that a consistent import policy would help the two countries advance toward a harmonized research program.
Patil said the demand for lentils in India is about double what it can produce and he suspects that this, along with a growing Indian economy, will bring price stability.
