Wheat Production in India: Technologies to Face Future Challenges

To meet the growing demands under the constrains of depleting natural resources, environmental fluctuation and increased risk of epidemic outbreak, the task of increasing wheat production has become daunting. The euphoria generated by first green revolution is very quickly subsiding and the second generation problems are becoming more intense with each passing year. The factors responsible for first green revolution seem to be exhausting rapidly and there is immediate need to develop the technologies which can not only increase the wheat production but also sustain at higher level without adversely affecting the natural resources. More investment on germplasm improvement, conservation agriculture including breeding for varieties adaptive to conservation agriculture, hybrid wheats, broadening the genetic base of the varieties at farmers level, wide scale utilization of alien translocations in the breeding programme along with integration of marker assisted selection and other innovative approaches with traditional breeding methods are some of the technologies which can yield dividend in the coming years.