Daily item in food basket – poor man’s meat

Introduction Historically, India is the largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses. Although it is the world’s largest pulses producer, there is still a huge shortage of pulses and also, the prices are not affordable to a large section of consumers. An immediate need is the development and dissemination of low-cost technologies in pulses production, so that they can be affordable to the common man. Even though pulses production increased by 3.35% per annum during the last decade, the cost of production and consequent prices are too high to be affordable to the common man; to increase production at lower cost is a bigger challenge. The earlier experience shows that technological efforts need to be supported by the right policy environment to harvest fruits of R&D in agriculture (Reddy 2009). Still, the productivity of pulses in India is low at 694 kg/ha, and to make pulses production internationally competitive, the average yield levels need to be increased to at least 1ton/ha.