Redgram

History

Introduction Origin Area And Distribution

Introduction

It is commonly known as Arhar. It is an important and old crop of this country.
It is the second most important pulse crop only after chickpea.
Pigeonpea is a crop primarily of India, though there are substantial areas in Africa especially in eastern Africa where pigeonpea is grown. It is also becoming increasingly important in central and south America.
Though pigeonpea is grown in a wide range of agro-ecological situations, its deep rooting and drought tolerant characters make it especially useful crop in the area of low and uncertain rainfall and on the lighter soils.
Red Gram is sometimes grown as a sole crop, but more typically, it is grown in relatively complex systems where it is intercropped, or mixed with other crops.
Traditionally long duration varieties of pigeonpea which take about 240-270 days to mature are of low yield potential and susceptible to different diseases and pests. These varieties are also damaged by frost which frequently occur in most parts of northern India in the month of December and January.
Recently some short duration varieties of about 130-160 days have been developed which have high yield potential (20-30 q/ha) and harvested by end of November.
Pigeonpea is mainly used as 'dal'. It is rich in iron, iodine and the essential amino-acids like lycine, cystine and arginine. It is also used as ration for milch cattle. Its straw is also palatable and green leaves may be used as fodder. Sticks of pigeonpea are used for various purposes such as thatch and basket making, etc.
Pigeonpea being a leguminous plant is capable of fixing atmospheric nitrogen and thereby restore lot of nitrogen the soil.

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Origin

Pigeonpea is the most widely grown crop in the country and has been under cultivation for over three thousand years.
It has been reported to occur in wild state in the upper region of Nile river and the coastal districts of Angola in Africa.
Therefore, Africa may be its original place and from where it might have been introudced to India.
However, according to Vavilov, India is the place of origin or pigeonpea.

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Area And Distribution

Pigeonpea is grown on an area of about 4.01 million hectares with the production of 2.65 million tonnes in the country.
The national productivity of pigeonpea is only 661 kg per hectare.
It is second most important crop after chickpea among different pulse crops in the country.
The maximum area was occupied by U.P. From 1970 onwards, Maharashtra had the largest area under pigeonpea. But in production, U.P. has ranked first since 1965.
The productivity of pigeonpea in UP is around 1011 to 1405 kh/ha.

Worldwide Area, Production and Productivity details for Redgram during 2012

Country	Area ha.	Production in Mt	Productivity in Kg/Ha
World	5324322	4237122	796
India	3860000	2650000	687
Kenya	143212	89390	624
Malawi	203400	237210	1166
Myanmar	650000	900000	1385
Nepal	17471	14082	806
Uganda	101000	84,200	834

Source: FAOstat citation

Districtwise Area, Production & Productivity of Redgram in Telangana 2010-11

District	Area in Hectares	Production in Tonnes	Productivity in tonnes/ha
Mahaboobnagar	124267	50577	0.41
Rangareddy	41912	11148	0.27
Medak	29783	20848	0.70
Nizamabad	5708	5811	1.02
Adilabad	49532	27094	0.55
Karimnagar	9434	3406	0.36
Warangal	18969	5103	0.27
Khammam	14867	5530	0.37
Nalgonda	46957	21647	0.46

Source: Season and Crop Report, Andhrapradesh (erstwhile)

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Telangana

Redgram

About Redgram

History
Morphology

Redgram Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamil Nadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.