National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP), New Delhi - 110 012.
*Author for correspondence: E-mail: santkumar@ncap.res.in
1The earlier version of this paper was presented at the National Seminar on ‘Agrarian Distress: Problems and Remedies’ organized by the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NCAP), New Delhi, on 1–2 August 2007.
The study has revealed that agricultural research and development (R&D) has potential to offer long-term solutions to the problems of Indian agriculture. With the changing environment and supply-side constraints, the role of R&D has become more important. This realization alongwith past performance of agricultural R&D has convinced the government to commit a significant proportion of its resources for developing appropriate technologies. The ICAR-SAUs system has come out with a number of improved agricultural technologies for major agro-climatic conditions. The paper has provided a list of some of these technologies, which are capable of making farm operations easy, provide savings in resources, reduce production losses, improve product quality and increase shelf-life of products, etc. These technologies eventually provide higher availability of quality foods and higher farm income, including maintaining productive capacity of agro-ecosystems. Since some of the new technologies are information-intensive, the role of ICT has become more important alongwith empowerment of farmers with scientific know-how.
