The recent advances in varietal development has taken a turn for hybrid varieties of different crops which have been accepted world over because of higher productivity, uniform maturity and ease in harvesting. Accordingly hybrids of maize, vegetables, sunflower and certain pulses have already been introduced and accepted by farmers. According to official sources recently hybrid Rice production has been taken up with the collaboration of China and is getting importance day by day.
It is expected that this would get popularity in near future. Further with the advances in bio-technological sciences efforts are being made to change the genetic make up and produce transgenic crops.
This technology is still in its initial stages but lot of reservations is being shown and thus need to be evaluated before adoption. Improved crop varieties play a significant role in increasing the production.
At the time of independence, the country was using the traditional local crop varieties, which although possessed some better quality parameters but had very low yield potential and thus the annual growth rate was quite low.
Realising this fact major emphasis was given to varietal improvement which resulted in the development of semi-dwarf varieties of wheat and rice.
These varieties completely changed the scenario during the decade of sixties and was correctly termed as Green Revolution. The annual growth rate jumped from 0.6 percent in 1960 to a record peak of about 18 percent in 1970-71.
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