Empowerment through enrichment on-farm IPM of chickpea in Nepal-2. Information bulletin no. 65

Empowerment Through Enrichment is the second information bulletin and is the part of the Project on ‘IPM of chickpea in Nepal’. It contains information about the mid-term evaluation of the project. This is in continuation of the first study, Chickpea Production Constraints and Promotion of Integrated Pest Management in Nepal. The mid-term evaluation revealed that the success of adoption of IPM technology was due to socio economic emancipation of peasants, freedom from the clutches of usurers and poorest among the poor being benefited. Market linkage strengthened farmer’s faith in technologies. Since the chickpea is highly remunerative as a crop of rice fallow lands in winter (rabi), the technology is fast spreading to other villages. Sustainable environment will make the intervention spread faster. Removal of poverty by IPM-chickpea in Nepal is quantified in the third bulletin, Wealth Generation through Chickpea Revolution

Farmers' empowerment, soil enrichment and wealth generation through chickpea-IPM in Nepal

IPM for chickpea is a sustainable development model developed andimplemented in Nepal by DFlD, NRI, l CRISAT and NARC. It haspositively affected soil fertility, human health and aided incomegeneration for the poor. The study was conducted with the help ofPRA, RRA techniques. The results suggest that IPM-chickpea hasbrought about a revolution in study villages. The empirical studies onchickpea-IPM cultivars show that the technology is an effective tool foreradicating hunger in Nepal's Terai region. The resulting starvation isprevented by systematically recreating a minimum level of incomes andentitlements. The project has proved that in the short run somethingeffective can be done to remedy these desperate situations.The production of chickpea will lead to higher yields of paddy;restoration of soil health and fertility; increase in human nutritionand reduce consumption of fertilizers; import substitution and exportspromotion; reduction in poverty, through wealth generation and socialupliftment, besides creating opportunities for development in Nepal.This project has provided food and nutritional security to farmers.The IPM-chickpea model can be replicated elsewhere in the worldwhere the same agroecological features exist

Integrated crop management of chickpea in Nepal past, present and future

Chickpea until recently was a major winter pulse crop in Nepal normally grown on residual moisture after harvest of rice. A severe botrytis gray mold disease (BGM) epidemic in 1997/98 devastated the crop in Nepal and the damage was two-fold. Not only did farmers lose their crop, they did not cultivate chickpea in the following season due to lack of seed and disillusionment with the crop. A collaborative program between the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and Natural Resources Institute (NRI) was launched on the Integrated Crop Management (ICM). The focus was on Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to fight diseases (BGM and wilt) and insect-pests (pod borer) to rehabilitate chickpea in the rainfed rice and maize based cropping systems in Nepal. The components of ICM technology included high yielding chickpea variety, Avarodhi (tolerant to BGM), treating seed with fungicide (Bavistin), wider row spacing, and applying need-based sprays of fungicide (Bavistin) to control BGM, and need based application of insecticide, Monocrotophos® or tndosuljan® (Ihiodan) and biocide (Nuclear Poly neurosis Virus NPV) for the management of pod borer. In the 1998/99 seasons, ICM technology was evaluated in 110 farmers' fields, and large yield responses were obtained. The following season saw a five-fold increase in adoption of chickpea using the ICM package. This number multiplied to 1100 farmers in 2000/01, 7000 farmers in 2001/02, 15,000 farmers in 2002/03 and 21,000 farmers in 2003/04. The overall mean grain yield obtained by adopting ICM (2.5 t/ha) was 124.5% greater than yield from non-ICM farmers. The increase in net income for chickpea cultivation attributable to ICM was two to six-fold. Further on-farm ICM of chickpea resulted in: 1) increase in family income by 80-100%, 2) increase in protein consumption by 40%, 3) increase in brick and mortar houses by 22%, 4) increase in labor use by 20%, 5) increase in household expenditures by 45%), and 6) increase in livestock ownership by 30%). Chickpea performance for profit and wealth was $216 per farmer that resulted in increase in overall wealth of 3500 project farmers by$750,000. In addition to these contributions, a farmer-friendly BGM disease forecasting system was developed and village level farmer-owned seed systems and IPM schools were initiated to sustain chickpea in Nepal. The ICM technology used so successfully in Nepal also holds great potential for chickpea in BGM-prone areas in India and Bangladesh

The adoption of ICM technologies by poor farmers in Nepal

Rural poverty remains pervasive throughout Nepal, the poorest country in South Asia and a predominantly agrarian nation, with 60% of its GNP derived from agriculture. The principal foods are cereals (rice, maize and wheat) with grain legumes grown as secondary crops during the winter, mostly in paddy fields using residual moisture for plant establishment. As the staple crop, rice is grown in 1.45 million hectares across the country but 400,000 ha remain fallow in winter (Subba Rao et al. 2001). The exploitation of this uncultivated land offers one route to resolving problems of food security in Nepal. Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), the 3rd most important pulse in Nepal after lentils {Lens esculenta) and pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan) provides a high yielding and high value crop option for poor farmers. Like all pulses, chickpea is a very important source of protein for poor rural families and equally so for the urban poor. It is also valuable because it is a highly versatile grain and is used for making biscuits, breads and sweets as well as a soup vegetable. It provides an excellent crop with which to tackle food security and alleviating malnutrition, and as a winter crop, it lends a strong focus on the agricultural role of women

Reviving chickpea production in Nepal through integrated crop management, with emphasis on Botrytis gray mold

This paper describes the current status of chickpea production and assesses the damage caused by the grey mould disease (Botrytis cinerea) in Nepal. It also discusses the effects of different integrated crop management components (host plant resistance, fungicide management, forecasting model-based fungicide application, row spacing variation, and seed treatment with Rhizobium) in the control of Botrytis grey mould and improvement of chickpea production in the country

Chikungunya virus: emerging targets and new opportunities for medicinal chemistry

Chikungunya virus is an emerging arbovirus that is widespread in tropical regions and is spreading quickly to temperate climates with recent epidemics in Africa and Asia and documented outbreaks in Europe and the Americas. It is having an increasingly major impact on humankind, with potentially life-threatening and debilitating arthritis. There is no treatment available, and only in the past 24 months have lead compounds for development as potential therapeutics been reported. This Perspective discusses the chikungunya virus as a significant, new emerging topic for medicinal chemistry, highlighting the key viral target proteins and their molecular functions that can be used in drug design, as well as the most important ongoing developments for anti-chikungunya virus research. It represents a complete picture of the current medicinal chemistry of chikungunya, supporting the development of chemotherapeutics through drug discovery and design targeting this virus