Seven decades of vegetables research in India

India is the second largest vegetable producing country in the world and the R&D efforts have resulted spectacular increase in nutritionally rich vegetable production in the country. With approximately 340 million tonnes the horticulture sector has surpassed cereals in food production and diversified food basket. This has played in important role in ensuring food security and decreasing malnutrition in the country. With seasonal to perennials, horticulture has also played an important role in developing multiple cropping systems models to increase production and productivity in a given area, providing periodic income and increasing the income at various levels in addition to making agriculture more sustainable. These systems play a significant role in reducing the carbon sequestration, mitigating the greenhouse gasses and foot print and increasing the sustainability of the food production systems. With state of art technologies like high density planting, precision horticulture, urban horticulture, vertical farming, protected cultivation, multilevel cultivation, micro irrigation, aqua and aeroponics, drone technology, remote sensing, nanotechnology, smart farming etc are revolutionizing horticulture globally and so also in India.