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the previous technological innovations have been targeted to
address climatic constraints in specific locations. Building upon
this notion of retrospective analysis, I investigate the process by
which India's agricultural research and development systems
have addressed specific climatic challenges and opportuni-
ties in the past. Logically, the core organizing questions then
become: (a) do local climatic limitations provide incentives for
farmers and public institutions to invest in research and devel-
opment of technologies to overcome these limitations?; and (b)
can the efforts of the past few decades to put in place a national
agricultural research be a reasonable guide for adaptation to
climate change?
The aim of this review is to offer guidance and priorities to
federal agencies and private foundations funding research and
development, policy makers, the scientific community, and eco-
nomic sectors as they determine the avenues to best address the
pressures facing agriculture today while also developing plans to
optimize tomorrow's cropping systems.
11.2
Background
Research and technological innovations in agriculture have
enabled farmers to cope with various challenges and have been
fundamental to the growth and development of agriculture
around the world (Rosenberg, 1992; IFPRI, 2009). They are
extremely rich and diverse in nature. One of the notable suc-
cesses came from a global effort to fight wheat rust—a plague
that has been known to humanity for thousands of years, but had
never been effectively controlled (Dubin and Brennon, 2009).
The wheat rust success evolved into a much larger, more mul-
tidimensional series of successes and came to be known as
Green revolution. Likewise, successes in Sub-Saharan Africa
were not less important in addressing the persistent threat and
hunger in the region. For example, in East and South Africa,
technological innovation in maize led to a growth in maize
yields among the regions, primarily smallholder agricultur-
ists (IFPRI, 2009). The introduction of zero-tillage rice-wheat
cultivation techniques in Gangetic plains provided benefit to
some 620,000 farmers. In this practice, the seeds are planted in
unplowed fields to conserve soil fertility, economise on scarce
water, reduce land degradation, and lower production costs
(Erenstein, 2009).
Although a future climate caused by global warming may
be very different from the one that society has experienced in
