Wide adoption of 304 Improved legume varieties across 15 countries in Africa, India and Bangladesh

Published on: December 3, 2021, Submitted by Jake Carampatana on: December 3, 2021, Reporting year: 2021

Sustainable Development Goals Contribution

Consolidation of CRP-GLDC impact studies reveal estimates obtained from higher confidence studies denoted a significant adoption representation with a land size of 15.37 million hectares by 17.64 million households in CRP GLDC’s 13 priority countries.

n 2019, the United States Agency for International Development/Feed the Future funded Accelerated Value Chain Development Program (AVCD), through the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Egerton University Seed Unit introduced drought tolerant and high yielding varieties of pigeonpea (Egerton Mbaazi 1, Egerton Mbaazi 3 and Egerton Mbaazi 4), sorghum (EUS1 and Gadam) and green grams (Karembo and Biashara). These varieties have proved a fundamental fact: while the harsh environment is a major factor in crop failure, unavailability of improved varieties that can withstand or escape drought, that are disease-resistant and their respective certified seed have been the main and even bigger problems to agricultural productivity in the arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs).

Numerous studies have been contacted in the past to document the GLDC adoption, however, there is an underlying gap in analyzing and synthesizing the results of numerous GLDC adoption studies conducted. This has resulted into a recent review study of the past 69 studies in the 35 independent country crop combinations (CCCS). To establish the approximated number of varieties adopted during the GLDC implementation years (2018-21), the review study employed a criterion around national cropping areas and the number of households adopting the GLDC priority crops. Evidently, estimates obtained from higher confidence studies denoted a significant adoption representation with a land size of 15.37 million hectares by 17.64 million households in CRP GLDC’s 13 priority countries as of 2019. Extrapolated figures would therefore give 32 and 44.64 million respectively using the lower confidence studies. From this, the study showed estimates from both the higher and lower confidence studies that the area under improved GLDC varieties increased by approximately 15% on average across the 13 targeted countries between 2011 and 2019. Such coordinated studies on adoption rate, therefore, gave an approximate figure detailing the trend in the release of legume crops and reference is made to the Walker and Alwang (2015) adoption estimates from 2010 to 2014 survey data which was the benchmark, and which the study used to examine what has changed since and where. Subsequently, most of these varietal releases have been reportedly been facilitated by bilateral projects, including three Tropical Legume (TL) Projects (Monyo and Varshney, 2016).In one of the reports, there is the mention of 304 improved varieties of legume crops that have been developed in 15 countries in Africa, India, and Bangladesh. Among South Asian countries, India is seen to have released the greatest number of new legume varieties. Among them are the 16 groundnut, 7 pigeon pea, and 3 chickpea varieties.

The CGIAR Research program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals initiative has promoted cultivation of Improved GLDC Crops on an area of land ranging from 15.37 million hectares by a total of 17.64 million households in CRP GLDC’s 13 priority countries. Extrapolated figures using lower confidence levels would give 32 and 44.64 million respectively. Simultaneously304 improved varieties of legume crops have been developed in 15 countries in Africa, India, and Bangladesh (ICRISAT, 2020). Among them are the 16 groundnut, 7 pigeon pea, and 3 chickpea varieties (Varshney et al. 2019).