Food legumes for livelihood and nutritional security in North Eastern Himalayan Region: Prospects and constraints

Abstract

India is no longer dependent on other countries for foodgrains, thanks goes to policy planners, researchers and the farmers who made concerted efforts that ushered in green revolution in the 1960’s. However, despite being the largest producer of pulses in the world, we are still not self sufficient in pulses. India is the largest producer of pulses in the world with 25% share in the global production. Chickpea, pigeonpea, greengram, blackgram, lentil and field pea are important pulse crops contributing 39%, 21%, 11%, 10%, 7%, 5%, respectively to the total production of pulses in the country. The production and productivity of pulses in the country was 14.56 million tonnes and 625 kg/ha respectively from an area of 23.63 million hectares during 2007-08. The country has to realize the pulses production potential to become self sufficient. There is a real challenge where about 11 million ha of arable acidic soils with pH < 5.5 suffer from deficiencies as well as toxicities of certain nutrients and have very low productivity. Liming at the rate of 2 to 4 quintals/ha along with half of the recommended fertilizers raises the potential to double the productivity especially for oilseeds and pulses in the acid soil regions of the country. North East India soils are acidic in nature, and this region can contribute considerably to pulses production. The present paper presents an overview of the livelihood and nutritional security of food legumes and their prospects and constrains in north east hill regions. It also reports the phylogeny and particularly physiology of bacteria involved in these associations, as well as the relative agronomic importance of the different systems.