Enhancing food legumes production through south-south cooperation

A review meeting of OCPF-ICARDA project entitled “Increasing food legumes production by small farmers to strengthen food and nutrition security through adoption of improved technologies and governance within South-South cooperation” under India-Morocco Food Legume Initiative (IMFLI) was held on 3 July, 2017 in New Delhi, India.

Chaired by Dr. S. A. Patil, OCPF Advisor to India, the meeting was an opportunity for partners to review and discuss the progress of work completed from 2012 to 2016-2017 cropping seasons, and formulate work plans for the next phase of the project.

Overall, a good yield of lentil and grasspea was recorded in West Bengal during 2016-2017 cropping season, except some zones where, crop was affected by unusual heavy rains and subsequent water logging.

After four years of implementation, the results of IMFLI are highly encouraging. They include rehabilitation of food legumes in crop rotations and improving soil health, development of new high yielding and high quality germplasm, informal seed business initiatives to make seed available to farmers in quantities and quality, integrated crop and pest management  packages.

IMFLI was launched in 2012 by six partners from India and Morocco: OCP-Foundation (Morocco), Swaminathan Research Foundation (India), INRA, IAV Hassan II (both Morocco), ICRISAT and ICARDA. The aim was to rehabilitate food legumes in the production systems, in the human diets and link farmers to markets and to improve the revenues and livelihoods of small farmers. It also aimed to exchange of experiences, knowledge and capacity building within south-south collaboration India-Morocco.