Pulses production in India: Present status, bottleneck and way forward
India is the still by and large vegetarian in dietary habit and heavily depends upon vegetative source to meet out its daily protein requirement. India is bound to be global leader in terms of production and consumer of pulses. Since, India is leading importer of pulses, production of pulse/ legume crops has been stagnant over the years. Consequent upon this there is widening gap between demand and supply. About 20 % of the total pulses demands are met by imports only. Apart from legumes fix atmospheric ‘N’ in readily available form to the upcoming succeeding crop. Associated non legume intercrop also gets benefited by ‘N’ transfer from legume roots up to some extent. It also contributes to sustain production system through physical, chemical and biological improvements of soil properties, as a rotation effect. The seed replacement rate is still (<30%) which lower than cereals especially wheat and rice. This paper addresses the bottleneck and focus on the way forward for improving pulses production in India, vertically and horizontally as well.