Homing Pigeonpea

Pigeonpea was once widely grown in China as a host for lac insects, the source of shellac. Following the advent of plastics and subsequent collapse of the shellac market, pigeonpea cultivation in China languished for decades. Now, Chinese farmers' eager acceptance of improved pigeonpea varieties bred and introduced by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) promises a future complete with pigeonpea noodles and pigeonpea wine.

The crop's cultivated area in China has exploded from 50 hectares in two provinces in 1999 to 100,000 hectares in 12 provinces in 2006. Meanwhile, innovative Chinese farmers have found diverse uses for pigeonpea. These include preventing soil erosion; rehabilitating degraded soils; providing feed for livestock and fish and substrate for mushrooms and lac; and human consumption as a vegetable. Chinese food technologists have recently developed a number of processed foods and drinks using both dry and green pigeonpea seeds.

ICRISAT Director General William Dar predicts that pigeonpea's presence in China will be further strengthened with the arrival of hybrid pigeonpea developed by ICRISAT.

ICRISAT and Chinese scientists inspect pigeonpea growing on slopes next to roads.

The Center's role since 1997 has been to provide suitable seed and production technology packages and train Chinese scientific and extension staff. Strong pigeonpea research programs have subsequently emerged at the Institute of Resource Insects of the Chinese Academy of Forestry in Kunming, Yunnan Province, and at Guangxi Academy of Agriculture Sciences in Nanning.

Today, pigeonpea can be seen growing on roadsides, slopes and riverbanks.

"Pigeonpea has been found very successful at covering the soil and reducing soil erosion," reports Zong Xuxiao of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Beijing. "If perennial pigeonpea is planted after the first rains, it grows in 4 months to cover the ground. By comparison, other plants capable of holding soil take years to become established."

"Pigeonpea has been planted in China primarily on wastelands, not to replace other crops," explains KB Saxena, ICRISAT's principal pigeonpea breeder, adding that innovative Chinese farmers have also successfully intercropped pigeonpea with cassava and banana.

Hybrid pigeonpea varieties developed at ICRISAT currently await commercialization in India. MS Swaminathan, chair of the Indian National Commission on Farmers, stated in a recently published interview that ICRISAT's development of hybrid pigeonpea capable of yielding 3-4 tons per hectare had the potential to launch a "pulses revolution" akin to the Green Revolution triggered by semi-dwarf varieties of rice and wheat in the 1960s.

With productivity improvements from inbred varieties stagnating, pigeonpea breeders had long aimed to break the yield barrier using hybrids. The hitch was the lack of pigeonpea male-sterile lines unable to self-pollinate . Six hybrids developed using genetic male-sterility starting in 1991 offered 25-40% higher yield but produced seed too inefficiently to allow commercialization. ICRISAT refined a more efficient cytoplasmic-nuclear male-sterility system using wild relatives of pigeonpea. Among these, one system derived from Cajanus cajanifolius is being used to develop the new generation of pigeonpea hybrids with good seed yield.

With ICRISAT's pigeonpea team convinced that commercial hybrids are just around the corner, Saxena reports that Chinese seed companies have shown interest in producing hybrid pigeonpea seeds for the Indian market.

For more information, contact S Gopikrishna Warrier (w.gopikrishna@cgiar.org).