New Delhi: Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi has developed many new varieties of wheat, rice, mustard and fruits even as it celebrates its golden jubilee convocation week.

Informing media person during a press conference held at historic library building at IARI campus at Pusa, New Delhi, Dr H S Gupta, Director IARI informed that the Institute has developed a new wheat variety HD 2967, which is good for the entire Indo-Gangetic plain from east to west and is resistant against yellow rust. The demand from the farmers for this newly developed variety is being met through an intensive programme of producing 20,000 quintals of its seed for Rabi season of 2012-13.

Dr Gupta said that while the Pusa Basamati 1121 continues to be a leading variety contributing to about Rs 11,000 crores worth of rice last year, another new variety Pusa 1509 has been developed which matures 20 days earlier and has the advantage of non-shattering and non-lodging with its superior grain size and cooking qualities.

In order to improve the profitability of the farmers and productivity of the soil, as well as, better nutritional security to the consumer, the Institute is focusing on developing protein rich better varieties of pigeon-pea (Arhar), and chick-pea (Kabuli Chana). New chick pea variety Pusa 5023 and 5028 have been found to give an average yiled of 2.5 tosn and 2.7 tons per hectares respectively.

Similarly an Indian mustard variety Pusa 28 has been developed for early sowing in September as an additional crop between kharif and rabi season. This variety has seedling stage heat tolerance and very high productivity with an average yield of 2 tons per hectare in 107 days of maturity.

In order to promote nutritional security, the Institute has developed heat tolerant variety Pusa Vishti for tropical red carrot for July sowing with an average yield of 25 tons per hectare to ensure its availability round the year.

Similarly, varieties of cauliflower and ridge-gourd have also been developed to ensure their availability round the year besides giving high yields.

While mango varieties of Amrpali and Mallika have now been widely cultivated in Orissa, Karnatka, Jharkhand and other states, 4 new mango hybrid viz. Pusa Pratibha, Shresth, Pitambar, and Lalima have been developed for this region.

Crop Protection: Dr Gupta informed that the Institute work has helped in the identification of Chairkey and Foorkey diseases of cardamom to facilitate the production of virus free planting material.

Natural Resource Management: Low cost user friendly digital soil test and fertilizer recommendation meter has been developed for quantitiave estimation of avialble nutirnets which will greatly help in measuring soil fertility and recommendation of fertilizer dozes.

Education: The Institute has recently established a new Centre for Environment Sciences and Climate Resilient Agriculture as a follow up of its path breaking research on methane emission from Indian rice fields.

Besides contributing to human resource development in the area of higher education and research in the country the Institute gets students from large number of countries and is actually establishing research centres and universities in Burma, Afghanistan and Africa.

A global alumni meet is also being on this occasion where more than 400 distinguished alumni from more than 38 countries are participating to discuss the issues of “Shaping Human Resource for Global Competitiveness”. The meet was inaugurated by Shri Harish Rawat, Minister of State for Agriculture, Food Processing Industries and Parliamentary Affairs, GoI who complimented the Institute and its alumni for doing an unparallel work in the field of agriculture and education.