Pulse production and malnutrition

Dr. Banarsi Lal and Dr. Vikas Tandon

Although India has made substantial progress in food grain production but the nutritional problems still continue in progress. It has been observed that 42% of the Indian children under the age of five are still malnourished and underweight. Around 30 per cent children of this age group are stunted and around 17 per cent children are having relatively low weight. Around 40 per cent of the world malnourished children are found in India. After Bangladesh, India has the highest level of child malnutrition in South Asia. More than 85 per cent pregnant women are anaemic in India. In fact India has the highest number of anaemic married women in the world. Vitamins deficiency still continues to be the serious problem for mental and physical development of the children. The pregnant women do not get proper diet causing the low weight of the children. It has been observed that rural malnutrition levels are higher than urban malnutrition. Although India has made many strides in reducing the malnutrition problem but even then the protein deficiency still continues to be the great problem both in the rural and urban areas. It has been observed that 80 per cent of the rural population and 70 per cent of the urban households consume less than the recommended levels of 2400 kilocalories and 2100 kilocalories respectively. Although the green revolution efforts and improving standard of living, the Indians are consuming far less proteins than they used to consume few decades before. In 1983 the per capita per day availability of proteins by the rural Indian was 63.5 which reduced to 55.3 in 2005 while the uptake of proteins per capita per day reduced by the urban Indian was 58.1 to 55.4 in the same period. Although numerous efforts are made to increase the pulses production but there had been no perceptible change in per capita availability which is declining during the last five decades. The per capita availability of pulses in 1951-56 was 60gm which has now declined to 36 gm while the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommendations are 80 gm per capita per day. The import of pulses is showing a growing trend.

Pulse production has enormous potential in agrarian economy but there is stagnation in the pulses production specially in last few decades in our country. Now the scientists have observed that the pulse production is helpful not only in raising the agricultural economy but also to eliminate the malnutrition from the country. During the last few decades innumerable high yielding varieties have been developed yet there has been only a marginal increase in production.

Pulses belong to family Leguminosae and they are the seeds of the leguminous plants. Pulses can supply quality protein in our diet and they form an integral part of vegetarian diet. Pulses fix the atmospheric nitrogen in the root nodules where the nitrogen fixing bacteria are found and the pulses are very helpful in the sustainable agriculture. Thus every pulse plant is a mini-fertilizer plant in itself. These crops are protein rich but they can be grown in moisture stress and low input conditions. Around 75 per cent of the area under pulses is rain fed and therefore their production has not been increased significantly. The total area under pulses remains stagnant (23-24 million hectares) and the production is only 14-15million tones over the last five decades. The average productivity 658kg/ha is far below than experimental results of 2-5t/ha of different pulse crops. France has the maximum productivity 4769kg/ha in the world. We occupy number one position in the world with 25 per cent share in the global production from 32 per cent area but our productivity is very low and we still stand at number 118th position in case of productivity in the world. There is dire need to increase the pulse production in the country due to ever-increasing population and preference for pulses as the cheapest source of dietary protein. According to the recommendations and expected growing population,it is estimated that the country required around 38 million tonnes of pulses up to 2018. Pulses are not only the rich source of proteins but also they contain many important amino acids than the cereals proteins. Pulses are rich in vitamin A which is three or four times greater when compared with wheat. Pulses are also rich in Vitamin C specially at sprouting stage which is absent at ordinary state. Pulses are also rich in minerals specially in Ca, which is mostly required by the human system.

In order to augment the protein in our diet there is an urgent need to increase the pulses production. There is need not only to increase the productivity but also the quality of pulses production. The scientific innovative technologies especially mutation breeding research should be adopted to increase the pulse production in the country. The abiotic stresses such as low and high temperature, drought, salt, excessive salt resisting varieties should be developed. The early maturing varieties should be developed for multiple cropping systems so that overall production can be increased. Development of integrated pest and disease management and integrated nutrient management is needed. Research to increase the photosynthetic efficiencies and collection, utilization, evaluation and maintenance of genetic resources is needed with special attention on dry land situations.

Mutation breeding can be utilized as an important tool in pulses production. The quality and the quantity of the pulses can be improved by the mutation breeding. Mutation research has become the global activity. The success of mutation research depends upon the availability of genetic information about the starting material. When there is desired to improve one or two identifiable characters then the induced mutations are particularly useful. It has been observed that more than 1300 varieties of different varieties have been developed through mutation breeding. Useful germ plasm is another contribution of mutation breeding. Mutations can be utilized in fundamental genetic and physiological studies and also in recombination breeding. New cultivars with improved yield and nutritive quality and genotypes which have more nitrogen fixation and more efficient symbiosis suitable under the sustainable agriculture can be achieved through induced mutations. Scanty work has been done on the quality aspects of pulses. Mutation breeding can be very helpful to augment the pulse production and to wipe out the malnutrition from the country.

(The writers are Assistant Professors at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology-Jammu)

 

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