Surinder Kumar Vasal, former scientist at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre and the winner of World Food Prize, stressed the need for advanced hybrid technology to improve agricultural productivity to meet the increasing demand for food grain globally.
He was delivering the First Foundation Day lecture at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur
here.“The global population is estimated to increase from 7.2 billion now to 8 billion by 2021, the agriculture sector across the world would have to face a new challenge of meeting increased demand for food grains. It is possible with the multiplying productivity by undertaking intense research and innovations in hybrid technology," he said. He emphasised that the advancement of hybrid technology should be directed towards addressing the current and the future effects of climate on agricultural productivity.
“Concern for climate change is real and in more recent years we are experiencing extremes of weather conditions. Adopting crops to climate change is thus important and necessary investments must be made now to mitigate the challenges arising out of this change. Hybrid technology has the firepower to make rapid advances in this direction,” he said. Dr. Vasal pointed out that the advancement of hybrid maize technology in the 20th century had enabled both developed and developing countries to increase maize productivity.
“The technology has proven to be exemplary as it has evolved continuously and revolutionised maize production in many countries,” he said.
He called upon hybrid breeders for introducing new strategies and tactics on a continuous basis to achieve goals in both hybrid performance and improving economics of hybrid maize seed production, the two prerequisites for successful commercialisation of any hybrid.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/need-to-improve-agriculture-productivity-scientist/article6634863.ece