“Research & Development” is the most important and innovative wing of any organization. Demand of products alters with time as per the need of the farming community who are feeding millions of people over the world with better choice of cultivars.

Need of the farmers are changing due to the continuous changes in the occurrence of biotic & abiotic stresses. Climate has been greatly changing compared to what it was hundred years back ! Insects, disease causing pathogens are also rapidly evolving with their new strains to survive in this earth. R & D is the answer to work for the changing times and changing agriculture ecologies. We are making efforts to divert funds to create and best of the standard R & D.

Indian Agriculture has seen lot of changes, to quote some examples are, Rice Stem Borer or Leaf Folder were fatal insects some fifty years back, but now Tungro Virus or BPH or Fall Army Worm is more dangerous one hence are considered as changed priorities ! Taste of human habits are changing. Now, people like to prefer rice having slender grains for a good cooking quality. Hybrid Paddy has seen sea changes since 25 years. So many attributes are considered while developing a good hybrid paddy, like balanced amylose content ( to avoid stickiness ), Head Rice Recovery (HRR) –to make sure that paddy to rice milling percentage increases, improvement on per day yield ( to come up with a good short duration hybrid ) and so on !!

Here comes the role of “R&D”. Its major role in our ‘Agri Input Sector’ is to keep the farmers updated as per their need. R&D offers new products with “Value Addition” apart from yield. “Value Addition” is in terms of pest resistance, or increased N –Use efficiency, or drought tolerance or submergence tolerance which keeps farmers in ‘comfort zone’ in adverse conditions arisen out of biotic or abiotic stresses. Agricultural land is limited and population is exponentially growing. To feed the entire population we need to make an equilibrium with these two unequal equations ! More yield per day will give you a better product in short duration.

• Conventional Breeding
• Resistance Breeding
• Biotechnology

Conventional Breeding

Ramnagar Seed Farm is focusing on conventional breeding which is nothing but systematic crossing in selected species with selected traits to come up with a better, desirable, need based hybrid. Preservation of these elite germplasm is also being taken care properly. Currently we are focusing on crops such as Hybrid paddy, bajra, maize, and vegetables.

Resistance Breeding

In ‘Resistance Breeding’ screening methods in greenhouse and laboratory for assessing for resistance to biotic stresses is the major part. In this screening method we test whether the hybrid is partial or complete resistant to any particular infection or insect attack .

Biotechnology

This is an integral part of Breeding in Modern Science and we are collaborating with many laboratories. We are currently focussing on

• Germplasm Fingerprinting
• Molecular Breeding
• Marker Assisted Selection (MAS)