IIPR — ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh): India's National R&D Anchor for Chickpea, Pigeon Pea, Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Field Pea, Rajmash and Lathyrus — Home of Pusa/IPCK/IPU Varieties, the AICRP on MULLaRP and Chickpea, the Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme and the NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub Network

The ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), headquartered at Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s nodal research institute for pulses— the pulse-crop family that supplies most of the plant protein consumed by Indian households and that anchors dryland, rainfed and rice-fallow cropping systems across every agro-climatic zone of the country. India is the world's largest producer, consumer and importer of pulses, with annual production above 26 million tonnes across roughly 29 million hectares— up from about 14 million tonnes in 2007–08. That growth rests on three pillars: short-duration high-yielding varieties bred at IIPR and its AICRP partners, cropping-system innovations that put pulses into previously fallow or single-cropped windows (rice-fallow pulses, summer mungbean, intercropped arhar), and the NFSM-Pulses seed and demonstration architecture. IIPR was set up as a Project Directorate at Kanpur in 1978, restructured into the Directorate of Pulses Research in 1983, and upgraded to a full ICAR institute in 1993 with an expanded all-India mandate. IIPR works alongside the pulses-heavy component of NFSM, the MSP price recommender CACP, the MSP-procurement scheme PM-AASHA and the pulses-procurement agency NAFED.

At a glance

• Body type: Central research institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), under DARE / MoAFW.
• Founded: Project Directorate for Pulses Research at Kanpur in 1978; upgraded to Directorate of Pulses Research in 1983; upgraded to ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR) in 1993.
• Headquarters: Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh (adjacent to Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, CSAUA&T Kanpur).
• Regional Research Centre: Dharwad (Karnataka) — for the peninsular chickpea and rabi pulses belt.
• Parent ministry: Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India (via DARE / ICAR).
• Mandate: basic, strategic and applied research on all Indian pulses — chickpea, pigeon pea / arhar, mungbean, urdbean, lentil, field pea, rajmash, lathyrus / khesari, horsegram, moth bean and cowpea.
• Coordinated projects: lead centre of the AICRP on Chickpea and the AICRP on MULLaRP (Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Lathyrus, Rajmash, Field Pea); network partner on AICRP on Pigeonpea with ICRISAT.
• Flagship variety families: IPC / IPCK (chickpea), IPA / IPH (pigeon pea including hybrid pigeon pea IPH 09-5), IPM (mungbean), IPU (urdbean), IPL (lentil), IPFD (field pea), IPLE / Prateek / Ratan (low-ODAP lathyrus), IPR (rajmash) — jointly with the Pusa pulses lines from IARI.
• Flagship programmes: extra-early chickpea (~85–100 days) and extra-early pigeon pea (~120 days) for double-cropping; wilt- and sterility-mosaic-resistant lines; Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme in eastern India; NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network for foundation-to-certified seed multiplication; biofortification for Fe / Zn.
• Sister ICAR institutes: IARI (Pusa pulses); IIRR (rice–pulses systems); NRRI (rice-fallow pulses in eastern India); CAZRI (arid-zone moth bean / mungbean / horsegram); CSSRI (salt-tolerant lentil / field pea); NBPGR (pulses germplasm); CRIDA (rainfed pulses systems); ICRISAT (international pigeon pea and chickpea partner).
• Website: iipr.icar.gov.in.

From 1978 Project Directorate to 1993 Institute — a lineage anchored in Kanpur

The Kanpur–Kalyanpur belt of the Indo-Gangetic plain has been an Indian pulses research site since the pre-Independence era, with long-running chickpea and lentil breeding at the Government Agricultural Farm Kanpur and later at Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology (CSAUA&T). In 1978, ICAR set up a Project Directorate for Pulses Research (PDPR) at Kanpur to consolidate the AICRPs on the various pulse crops under one national coordinator. In 1983, the Project Directorate was upgraded to the Directorate of Pulses Research (DPR) and given a modest in-house research programme in addition to its coordination role. In 1993, ICAR reorganised its pulses research system and upgraded the Directorate into a full all-India institute — the ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR) — with substantially expanded infrastructure, faculty and mandate covering both in-house strategic research and continued coordination of the AICRPs. IIPR is today one of the anchor institutes for India's pulses value chain, alongside ICRISAT (International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru — the CGIAR partner responsible for global chickpea and pigeon pea breeding) and IARI Pusa (the Pusa pulses breeding programme).

Location — Kalyanpur, Kanpur and the pulses heartland

IIPR sits at Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, on the western outskirts of Kanpur city off the Kanpur–Kalyanpur–Bhauti road, about 12 km from Kanpur Central railway station and immediately adjacent to Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology (CSAUA&T) Kanpur. The campus houses experimental fields, glass and screenhouses, wilt sick-plot nurseries for Fusarium screening in chickpea, sterility mosaic virus screening nurseries for pigeon pea, quarantine and seed production units, and laboratories on molecular breeding, plant pathology, entomology, physiology, biochemistry, food science and nutrition, and social sciences. The Uttar Pradesh — Madhya Pradesh — Bundelkhand corridor around Kanpur is the historic pulses heartland: Madhya Pradesh alone accounts for roughly a third of India's chickpea and a large share of its pigeon pea, and the neighbouring Bundelkhand districts (Jhansi, Lalitpur, Banda, Chitrakoot, Hamirpur, Mahoba) are a marginal-rainfall dryland pulses belt. IIPR's Regional Research Centre at Dharwad (Karnataka) extends the research presence into the peninsular chickpea and rabi pulses belt of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Research divisions and thrust areas

IIPR is organised into research divisions that between them cover the full pulses value chain from germplasm to farmer:

• Division of Crop Improvement — pulse-crop breeding, hybridisation, mutation breeding, marker-assisted selection and molecular breeding for chickpea, pigeon pea, mungbean, urdbean, lentil, field pea, lathyrus and rajmash; short-duration and extra-early variety development; erect / semi-erect / machine-harvestable plant type; hybrid pigeon pea using the cytoplasmic male sterility (A4) route.
• Division of Crop Production — cropping-system agronomy, rice-fallow pulses, summer mungbean, intercropping (arhar + sorghum, arhar + soybean, chickpea + linseed / mustard), residue-based no-till, INM with Rhizobium / PSB / mycorrhiza inoculation, and canopy-management studies for chickpea and pigeon pea.
• Division of Crop Protection — Fusarium wilt of chickpea (screening protocols and resistance sources), sterility mosaic disease of pigeon pea (SMD, transmitted by the Aceria cajani mite), Phytophthora blight of pigeon pea, yellow mosaic virus of mungbean and urdbean (MYMV / MYMIV), pod borer (Helicoverpa armigera) IPM including Bt-cotton learnings applied to arhar, pulse beetle (Callosobruchus) grain storage protection, and biocontrol using Trichogramma and NPV.
• Division of Basic Sciences — pulses genomics, quantitative trait loci for wilt resistance and drought tolerance, transcriptomics of nitrogen fixation, physiology of pod-set and pod-drop, biofortification for iron, zinc and protein quality.
• Division of Social Sciences — pulses economics, farm-level adoption studies, market channels, MSP-procurement analysis (in linkage with CACP and PM-AASHA), and gender and pulses studies (women farmers dominate pulse-crop management in many states).
• AKMU / Krishi Vigyan Kendra Kanpur Dehat — IIPR runs KVK Kanpur Dehat as its Farm Science Centre for direct-to-farmer outreach in the Kanpur region under the ATARI zonal umbrella.
• All India Coordinated Research Projects (AICRPs) — coordination and Trial Data Management System (TDMS) for AICRP-Chickpea, AICRP-MULLaRP and AICRP-Pigeonpea across roughly 40+ centres nationally.

Released varieties — the IPC, IPA, IPM, IPU, IPL, IPFD, IPLE, IPH, IPR families

IIPR-bred variety releases carry crop-specific prefixes and are released either alone or jointly through the AICRP-mediated CVRC / SVRC route. A partial short-list of released varieties that have moved measurably in the seed chain:

• Chickpea (IPC / IPCK): IPC 506, IPC 2010-100 (desi); IPCK 2004-29 / Ujjawal, IPCK 2002-29 (kabuli); wilt-resistant and machine-harvestable lines for central and peninsular India. Extra-early lines under IIPR trial that mature in about 85–100 days extend chickpea into northern Indo-Gangetic double-cropped rotations.
• Pigeon pea (IPA / IPH): IPA 203, IPA 8F, IPA 15F (early / medium-duration lines); IPH 09-5— one of India's CMS-based hybrid pigeon pea varieties, developed jointly with ICRISAT's A4 cytoplasmic male sterility system, delivering 25–30% yield gain over the popular UPAS 120 / Bahar checks. IIPR also works on extra-early pigeon pea (~120 days) that enables arhar–wheat rotation.
• Mungbean (IPM): IPM 02-14, IPM 205-7, IPM 02-3 — short-duration, synchronous-maturing summer / spring mungbeans that fit the wheat–summer mungbean rotation in Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. IPM 02-14 in particular has been widely adopted for MYMV tolerance and 60–65 day maturity.
• Urdbean (IPU): IPU 94-1 (Uttara), IPU 02-43, IPU 07-3 — MYMV-tolerant, short-duration urdbeans for kharif rainfed and rice-fallow niches in eastern and central India.
• Lentil (IPL): IPL 316, IPL 220, IPL 526, IPL 406 (Angoori) — small-seeded and bold-seeded rabi lentils, several suited for the rice-fallow niche in Bihar, eastern UP, Jharkhand and Assam.
• Field pea (IPFD): IPFD 99-13 (Vikas), IPFD 12-2 — dual-purpose (green pod + dry seed) field peas for the Gangetic and central-Indian rabi belts.
• Lathyrus (IPLE / Prateek / Ratan): Prateek and Ratan are low-ODAP lathyrus varieties (ODAP < 0.1%), making khesari safe to eat by conventional preparation and reviving a hardy rice-fallow legume that had been socially discouraged since the earlier lathyrism-linked ban.
• Rajmash (IPR): IPR 96-4, IPR 98-5 — kidney bean varieties for the Uttarakhand hill belt and the Kashmir / Himachal rajmash niche.
• Joint Pusa releases: IIPR co-releases many lines with IARI's Pusa pulses programme, so users see Pusa Chickpea, Pusa Arhar and Pusa Mungbean lines in the same seed catalogues.

AICRPs — Chickpea, MULLaRP and Pigeonpea network research

IIPR is the lead centre for the ICAR All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Chickpea and the AICRP on MULLaRP (Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Lathyrus, Rajmash, Field Pea), and a network partner in the AICRP on Pigeonpea (with ICRISAT as an international partner). Each AICRP runs a multi-year, multi-location testing pipeline — Initial Varietal Trials (IVT) → Advanced Varietal Trials (AVT-1) → AVT-2 → Central / State Variety Release Committee — plus Frontline Demonstrations (FLDs) that put newly released varieties on farmer fields in every mandate agro-climatic zone. IIPR anchors the Trial Data Management System (TDMS) for the coordinated data, publishes annual group-meeting proceedings and hosts the biennial Group Meets that decide the following year's IVT / AVT entries. AICRP centres sit at every major SAU and at CIMMYT / ICRISAT-linked stations, giving pulses research a truly all-India footprint.

The Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme — unlocking eastern India

The single largest untapped opportunity in Indian pulses is the rice-fallow area of eastern India — roughly 11–12 million hectares across Bihar, Jharkhand, eastern Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Assam where kharif rice is followed by an idle rabi season. Traditional practice leaves these fields fallow because of low residual moisture windows, the absence of short-duration pulse varieties fitted to that window, and the low mechanisation of post-rice tillage. The Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme, championed by IIPR in convergence with NFSM-Pulses, combines:

• Extra-early varieties: short-duration lentil (IPL 316, IPL 526), chickpea (IPC 2010-100), urdbean (IPU 94-1), mungbean (IPM 02-14) and lathyrus (Prateek) that mature within the residual-moisture window.
• Relay / paira / utera sowing: broadcasting pulse seed into standing rice about 7–15 days before rice harvest so the pulse germinates on residual soil moisture, with minimal or zero tillage.
• Zero-till after rice: using zero-till seed drills (supported by SMAM subsidy) to sow chickpea or lentil immediately after rice combine harvest, saving 10–15 days of turnaround.
• Seed availability: the NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network (see below) ensures that foundation and certified seed of the recommended rice-fallow variety is available in the district ahead of the rabi window.

If even a third of the rice-fallow area is brought under a pulse crop, India adds several million tonnes of pulses production with essentially no additional water and no cropping-area displacement — a central pillar of the Atmanirbharta in pulses drive that took production from about 14 million tonnes in 2007–08 to over 26 million tonnes by the early 2020s.

NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network — the foundation-to-certified seed pipeline

A perennial bottleneck in Indian pulses has been the low seed replacement rate (SRR) — much of the seed sown each year is farmer-saved seed from earlier releases, so the yield lift of a new variety takes years to reach farmers. The Seed Hub initiative under NFSM-Pulses, coordinated with IIPR and the AICRPs, addresses this directly. Each Seed Hub — set up at ICAR institutes, SAUs and identified KVKs — has a mandate to produce a floor quantity of quality pulses seed each year (typically 1,000+ quintals per hub), with a fixed split of breeder / foundation / certified seed, and to make this seed available to state seed corporations, cooperatives and farmer producer organisations (FPOs) at notified rates. Combined with subsidised seed minikits under NFSM-Pulses, the Seed Hubs have measurably lifted the pulses SRR and reduced the lag between IIPR / AICRP variety release and farmer adoption. IIPR runs a lead Seed Hub at Kanpur and coordinates the technical package for the network hubs.

Farmer outreach, KVKs and training

IIPR runs farmer-facing outreach that connects the Kalyanpur lab to India's pulse-growers:

• Krishi Vigyan Kendra Kanpur Dehat: IIPR hosts KVK Kanpur Dehat as its own Farm Science Centre for direct-to-farmer demonstration, on-farm trials, seed production and training in the Kanpur region — one of the 700+ KVKs in the national network.
• Frontline Demonstrations (FLDs): under AICRP-Chickpea, AICRP-MULLaRP and AICRP-Pigeonpea, IIPR coordinates thousands of FLDs each year on newly released varieties and the accompanying package of practices.
• NFSM-Pulses training: under NFSM-Pulses, IIPR delivers technical training to state agriculture-department staff, KVK subject-matter specialists and progressive farmers on cropping-system packages, seed production and Seed Hub operations.
• ATARI zonal linkages:IIPR's farmer outreach flows through the ATARI zonal ICAR structure that manages KVK networks region by region.
• Farmer FIRST and TSP / SCSP: IIPR runs Farmer FIRST cluster villages and delivers pulses seed and training under Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP) and Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan (SCSP) allocations to tribal and marginalised farmer households.

Connections to Central schemes and cooperating institutes

• NFSM — National Food Security Mission: the NFSM-Pulses component uses IIPR / AICRP-released varieties, IIPR-designed cropping-system packages (especially rice-fallow pulses) and the NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network for foundation and certified seed multiplication.
• CACP — Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices: recommends the Minimum Support Price (MSP) each season for the six mandated pulses (arhar / tur, gram / chana, urad, moong, masoor / lentil and rajmash under PSS).
• PM-AASHA: operationalises MSP procurement for pulses through the Price Support Scheme (PSS), Price Deficiency Payment (PDPS) and Private Procurement & Stockist Scheme (PPSS) windows.
• NAFED: the principal Central agency for pulses procurement under the Price Support Scheme, buying arhar / tur, chana, urad, moong and masoor at MSP from notified mandis.
• SMAM: the Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization — subsidy window for zero-till seed drills, multi-crop planters, threshers and pulses harvesters that make rice-fallow pulses and large-scale pulses harvest economically viable.
• NBPGR:the ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources — holds the Indian pulses germplasm collection (Cicer, Cajanus, Vigna, Lens, Pisum, Phaseolus, Lathyrus and wild relatives) that underpins IIPR's breeding pipeline.
• IARI: the Pusa pulses programme runs the parallel Pusa Chickpea, Pusa Arhar, Pusa Mungbean and Pusa Lentil variety families and co-releases many lines with IIPR.
• CAZRI:the Central Arid Zone Research Institute at Jodhpur covers arid-zone pulses (moth bean, mungbean, horsegram) for Rajasthan, Gujarat and Haryana's arid districts.
• CSSRI: the Central Soil Salinity Research Institute at Karnal works on salt-tolerant lentil and field pea for reclaimed sodic / saline lands.
• CRIDA: the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture at Hyderabad covers rainfed pulses systems for Deccan and central-Indian drylands.
• NRRI and IIRR: rice-research partners for the rice-fallow pulses cropping systems in eastern and southern India.
• ATARI and Krishi Vigyan Kendras: the ICAR extension backbone that propagates IIPR pulses varieties, package of practices and Seed Hub outputs to farmer families.
• Central agriculture schemes portfolio: the wider farmer-welfare envelope in which IIPR / NFSM-Pulses / PM-AASHA / NAFED sit.

Related pages

References

• iipr.icar.gov.in — IIPR Kanpur official portal: research divisions, AICRP on Chickpea, AICRP on MULLaRP, released varieties (IPC / IPCK / IPA / IPH / IPM / IPU / IPL / IPFD / IPLE / IPR), Regional Research Centre Dharwad, KVK Kanpur Dehat, Seed Hub programme and technology packages.
• icar.org.in — Indian Council of Agricultural Research — parent institution of IIPR.
• nfsm.gov.in — National Food Security Mission portal — NFSM-Pulses operational guidelines, Seed Hub notified locations, Targeting Rice Fallows programme and state-wise progress on the pulses-focussed intervention.
• agriwelfare.gov.in — Department of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare — pulses production statistics, MSP notifications and Krishonnati Yojana consolidated scheme documents.
• cacp.dacnet.nic.in — Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices — MSP recommendation reports for kharif and rabi pulses.
• nafed-india.com — National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India — pulses procurement under Price Support Scheme.
• icrisat.org — International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Patancheru — international partner for chickpea and pigeon pea (including the A4-CMS-based hybrid pigeon pea system).
• Press Information Bureau (PIB) — releases on India's pulses production milestones, NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network, MSP announcements and Atmanirbharta in pulses.

Frequently asked questions

What is IIPR and when was it founded?

IIPR — the ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research — is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s nodal research institute for pulses, headquartered at Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh. The institute traces its lineage to the Project Directorate for Pulses Research set up at Kanpur in 1978, which was upgraded in 1983 to the Directorate of Pulses Research and then to the full ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR) in 1993 with an expanded all-India mandate covering the whole rabi and kharif pulses portfolio. IIPR reports to ICAR under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Government of India, and is the lead centre for the ICAR All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Chickpea and the AICRP on MULLaRP (Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Lathyrus, Rajmash and Field Pea).

Where is IIPR located and what is the campus?

IIPR's headquarters campus is at Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024, Uttar Pradesh, on the western outskirts of Kanpur city off the Kanpur–Kalyanpur–Bhauti road — roughly 12 km from Kanpur Central railway station and adjacent to Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology (CSAUA&T) Kanpur. The Kanpur location matters for the science: the Indo-Gangetic plain around Kanpur is the historic heartland of Indian rabi pulses (chickpea, lentil, field pea), and the neighbouring Bundelkhand region is India's premier chickpea-belt and a major pigeon pea belt. The IIPR campus houses experimental farms, glass and screenhouses, a Pulses Genetic Resources Centre coordinating with NBPGR, a pulses seed production and processing unit, and specialised laboratories on molecular breeding, plant pathology, entomology, physiology and nutrition. IIPR also operates a Regional Research Centre at Dharwad (Karnataka) for the peninsular chickpea belt and off-station research farms at Bhadohi, Amla and elsewhere for kharif pulses evaluation.

What is IIPR's research mandate?

IIPR's mandate is basic, strategic and applied research on the full portfolio of Indian pulses: kharif pulses — pigeon pea / arhar / tur (Cajanus cajan), mungbean / green gram (Vigna radiata), urdbean / black gram (Vigna mungo), rajmash / kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum), moth bean (Vigna aconitifolia) and cowpea (Vigna unguiculata); rabi pulses — chickpea / gram (Cicer arietinum, both desi and kabuli), lentil / masoor (Lens culinaris), field pea (Pisum sativum), lathyrus / khesari (Lathyrus sativus) and rajmash (rabi types); and summer / spring pulses — summer mungbean and summer urdbean in irrigated systems. Priority thrusts include short-duration extra-early varieties for double-cropping, resistance to Fusarium wilt of chickpea and sterility mosaic disease of pigeon pea, tolerance to Helicoverpa armigera pod borer and Maruca vitrata, machine-harvestable and erect-plant-type varieties, biofortification for iron and zinc, and rice-fallow pulses systems for eastern India.

What are IIPR's flagship released varieties?

IIPR-bred varieties carry the prefixes IPC / IPCK (chickpea), IPA / IPH (pigeon pea), IPM (mungbean), IPU (urdbean), IPL (lentil), IPFD (field pea), IPLE / Prateek (lathyrus) and IPR (rajmash), and are released either by IIPR alone or jointly with the AICRP centres and SAUs. Notable examples include IPC 506 (desi chickpea), IPCK 2004-29 (kabuli chickpea), IPA 203 / IPA 8F / IPA 15F (pigeon pea), IPH 09-5 (hybrid pigeon pea developed with the male-sterility route pioneered at ICRISAT and ICAR), IPM 02-14 / IPM 205-7 (mungbean), IPU 02-43 / IPU 94-1 (Uttara) (urdbean), IPL 316 / IPL 220 / IPL 526 (lentil), IPFD 12-2 / IPFD 99-13 (field pea) and Prateek / Ratan (low-ODAP lathyrus). IIPR has also released the country's first extra-early chickpea (matures in about 85–100 days) and extra-early pigeon pea (matures in about 120 days) enabling double-cropping in the northern Indo-Gangetic plain. Many variety releases are joint with IARI's Pusa pulses programme, so users see Pusa Chickpea / Pusa Arhar / Pusa Mungbean lines alongside IPCK / IPA / IPM.

What is the AICRP on MULLaRP and the AICRP on Chickpea?

IIPR is the lead centre for two ICAR All India Coordinated Research Projects. The AICRP on Chickpea coordinates chickpea (desi and kabuli) varietal development, testing and seed-chain research across roughly 20-plus centres in the chickpea-growing states — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar, Jharkhand and others. The AICRP on MULLaRP does the same for the six-crop cluster of Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Lathyrus, Rajmash and Field Pea across roughly 25-plus centres. Both AICRPs run coordinated Initial Varietal Trials (IVT), Advanced Varietal Trials (AVT-1, AVT-2) and Frontline Demonstrations (FLDs) that generate the multi-location data feeding into the Central Variety Release Committee (CVRC) and State Variety Release Committee (SVRC) notifications. IIPR also anchors the AICRP on Pigeonpea (in partnership with ICRISAT and other centres) and contributes to network research on arid-zone legumes with CAZRI (see /cazri).

What is the Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme?

Roughly 11–12 million hectares of eastern India — Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, eastern Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Assam — are cultivated with kharif rice and then left fallow through the rabi season because of shallow rooting, residual soil moisture windows and traditional cropping practice. The Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme, championed by IIPR in convergence with NFSM-Pulses (see /nfsm), pushes short-duration lentil, chickpea, urdbean, mungbean and lathyrus into this fallow window using relay-sowing / paira / utera and zero-till-after-rice planting of extra-early IPL, IPC, IPU and Prateek varieties. If even a third of the rice-fallow area can be brought under a pulse crop, India adds several million tonnes of pulses production with no additional water and no cropping-area displacement — a central pillar of India's Atmanirbharta in pulses strategy that took production from about 14 million tonnes in 2007–08 to over 26 million tonnes by the early 2020s.

How does IIPR connect to NFSM-Pulses, PM-AASHA and the Seed Hub network?

IIPR is the R&D pipeline that feeds India's pulses programmes. The National Food Security Mission (see /nfsm) has a dedicated NFSM-Pulses component — the government's largest pulses-focussed intervention — which uses IIPR / AICRP-released varieties, IIPR-designed cropping-system packages (including rice-fallow pulses), and the NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network coordinated with IIPR for foundation-to-certified seed multiplication across ICAR / SAU / KVK farms. On the price side, the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (see /cacp) recommends the Minimum Support Price for the six mandated pulses (arhar / tur, gram / chana, urad, moong, lentil / masoor and rajmash under the PSS window), and PM-AASHA (see /pm-aasha) operationalises MSP procurement for these through the Price Support Scheme, Price Deficiency Payment and Private Procurement & Stockist schemes — with NAFED (see /nafed) as the principal procurement agency. IIPR-bred varieties feed straight into this MSP-backed value chain, giving farmers agronomic yield gains and a floor price.

The 1978 founding as the Project Directorate for Pulses Research, the 1983 upgrade to Directorate of Pulses Research, the 1993 upgrade to the ICAR–Indian Institute of Pulses Research, the Kalyanpur, Kanpur 208024 headquarters, the Dharwad Regional Research Centre, the AICRP on Chickpea and the AICRP on MULLaRP, the IPC / IPCK / IPA / IPH / IPM / IPU / IPL / IPFD / IPLE / IPR released variety families, the Rice-Fallow Pulses Programme and the NFSM-Pulses Seed Hub network described above draw on publicly available material on iipr.icar.gov.in, icar.org.in, nfsm.gov.in, agriwelfare.gov.in, cacp.dacnet.nic.in and PIB releases. Divisional structure, ongoing projects and released varieties are periodically revised — confirm current details on iipr.icar.gov.in before planning research visits, seed requests or Seed Hub partnerships.