Wheat Production in India: Technologies to Face Future Challenges

Abstract

To meet the growing demands under the constrains of depleting natural resources, environmental fluctuation andincreased risk of epidemic outbreak, the task of increasing wheat production has become daunting. The euphoriagenerated by first green revolution is very quickly subsiding and the second generation problems are becomingmore intense with each passing year. The factors responsible for first green revolution seem to be exhaustingrapidly and there is immediate need to develop the technologies which can not only increase the wheatproduction but also sustain at higher level without adversely affecting the natural resources. More investment ongermplasm improvement, conservation agriculture including breeding for varieties adaptive to conservationagriculture, hybrid wheats, broadening the genetic base of the varieties at farmers level, wide scale utilization ofalien translocations in the breeding programme along with integration of marker assisted selection and otherinnovative approaches with traditional breeding methods are some of the technologies which can yield dividendin the coming years.