ICAR institutes

Story hook

It is the kharif season of 1966. Two years of drought have left India's grain stocks at 9 million tonnes — barely six weeks of consumption. The country is surviving on PL-480 wheat shipments from the US that Lyndon Johnson keeps on "short-tether" — released month-to-month to extract policy concessions from a humiliated Indira Gandhi government. At the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in Pusa, Delhi, a young geneticist named MS Swaminathan is working with Norman Borlaug's dwarf wheat varieties (Lerma Rojo 64, Sonora 64) brought in from CIMMYT, Mexico.

By rabi 1967-68, IARI has produced Kalyan Sona and Sonalika — Indianised dwarf wheats that double the yield of traditional tall varieties. The Punjab fields go from 12 quintals per hectare to 25. Wheat output jumps from 12 million tonnes (1965) to 26 million tonnes (1972). The Green Revolution has begun.

Sixty years later, IARI is one of 113 institutes, 11 national bureaus, 6 national research centres, and 14 directorates that make up the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) — the world's largest national agricultural research system. From the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI) Karnal that gave India Operation Flood and made it the world's largest milk producer, to the Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI) Izatnagar that controls foot- and-mouth disease in 535 million cattle, to the Central Institute of Fisheries Education (CIFE) Mumbai that trains the workforce behind India's Blue Revolution — ICAR institutes have shaped how a country of 1.4 billion eats.

Why this matters for UPSC

ICAR has appeared in almost every Prelims since 2012 — usually as "which institute is at X location" or "MS Swaminathan / Norman Borlaug / Verghese Kurien association" questions. Mains GS-III tests the Green Revolution sequel (second Green Revolution, evergreen revolution, M S Swaminathan Committee). Interview boards probe MSP economics and the 2020-21 farm laws.