The Jewels of ICRISAT

The year 2012 marks a significant milestone in the institutional life of ICRISAT as we celebrate our 40th anniversary. This publication is therefore a timely chronicle of the Institute’s work and impacts over our four decades of service to the poor people of the dryland tropics. The book takes up an idea suggested by our Governing Board to highlight the ‘jewels’ of ICRISAT – the 16 breakthroughs and innovations described in this publication. These stories revolve around and cut across our four research programs: resilient dryland systems; markets, institutions and policies; grain legumes; and dryland cereals. ICRISAT’s target area – the dryland tropics – is home to more than 800 million people. These include the world’s poorest people, spread across 55 developing countries in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The dryland tropics are characterized by erratic rainfall, degraded soils and biodiversity, water scarcity, droughts, floods, and very poor physical and social infrastructure. People of the drylands are perennially plagued by poverty, hunger, food and nutritional insecurity, and powerlessness. The confluence of global warming, droughts, floods, increasing land degradation, rising food prices, soaring energy demand and population explosion is leading to a perfect storm that is inflicting untold suffering on millions of farming communities all over the world. Being the only global research center with a mandate focused on serving the dryland tropics, ICRISAT and our partners seek to help end this chronic plague. This publication aims primarily to help the reader understand ICRISAT’s core science and our impact in overcoming the daunting challenges of the dryland tropics. Likewise it illustrates the ways in which science can be mobilized to help achieve six critical development outcomes needed to bring about inclusive marketoriented development: food sufficiency, intensification