AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH:
Midlife Crisis Threatens Center for Semiarid Crops
Pallava Bagla
PATANCHERU, INDIA--Twenty-five years ago, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) was established here to do for the region's chief subsistence crops what the Green Revolution had done for the cultivation of wheat and rice. But now a severe budget shortfall has triggered massive staff cuts and raised concern about organizational deficiencies. Those problems, in turn, led to a thorough house cleaning of senior management this summer. The turmoil comes on top of persistent criticism that ICRISAT has had too little impact on the practices of local farmers, despite a gene bank of 110,000 plant varieties and its success in developing a fast-growing, high-yield hybrid of pigeon pea. Ironically, the crisis comes amid forecasts that climate variability poses an increasing threat to productivity.
