India is second largest rice producing country of the world with ~40 m hectare area under rice cultivation. About 30% of  i.e. 12 million ha of this area is  left fallow during the following rabi (post-rainy) season. Of the total rice fallow area about 82% lies in the Central and Eastern Indian states of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal.

India is deficit in pulses and imports 2-3 mt to meet the domestic pulses demand. The careful selection of pulses for cultivation in rice fallow areas of this tribal rich belt  offer opportunites for an additional crop for them utilising the moisture that the soil retains post monsoon and thereby offers food and nutritional security.

Due to stagnant production, the net availability of pulses in India has come down from 60 gm in 1951 to 41.7 g/day/person in 2012 which is way less than the Indian Council of Medical Research recommended 65 g/day/capita.

The post monsoon rice fallow season offers a window of opportunity (October-December) to cultivate short-duration pulses and oil seeds. Pulse cultivation is important as (i) per capita availability of pulses have reduced from 60 g to 41.7 g/ person/ day in the past 60 years due to  enhanced irrigation facilities in the northern India (where pulses used to be cultivated) pushed farmers to grow water intensive crops like rice and wheat which get them assured returns from government procurement (ii) pulses are an important source of proteins to the vegetarian and socio-economically weaker sections of the population. The reduced per capita availability of protein has decreased causing Protein-Energy-Malnutrition (PEM) especially among children below the age of five years in India.

Despite the government’s effort in the past 8 years to strengthen seed production and distribution, a shortage of 50,000 tonnes of seeds of pulses have been a major roadblock for increasing area under pulse production highlighting the requirement of decentralized model of seed production for a climatically diverse country like India. At the same time, there is a diverse genetic resource of non-traditional underexploited legumes (tribal pulses) and other varieties of pulses available but due to the absence of robust local seed system they remain underutilized.