Though India has achieved food security with the production of food grains reaching 330 MT, the demand for coarse cereals, pulses, oilseeds and vegetables is not fully met. In addition, they are not affordable for a large part of the population, leading to a high proportion of the under/malnourished population, with a sizable percentage of child wasting (19.3 per cent).

Alongside fulfilling its goal of increasing profitability in agriculture and its share of export in the world market, India needs to close the gap between potential and achievable productivity in most grain crops and vegetables, reduce the cost of production, promote cultivation and consumption of nutritionally-rich crops like millets, and focus on the quality of the agricultural produce.

While crop variety development will become faster and more precise in the coming years by using molecular technologies, speed breeding and gene-editing tools, applied seed technologies would ensure good performance even under less favourable, unpredictable, and harsh environments. Hence, seed technology today must combine genetic advancement with applied technologies to provide quality-enhanced seeds of improved varieties having higher productivity, high input use efficiency and the ability to withstand a range of biotic and abiotic stressors.

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