R&D

Millet Research & Development in India — Institutes, Programs, Breeding | shreeanna.life

The research landscape behind Shree Anna — IIMR Hyderabad, the AICRP network, ICRISAT, and how new millet varieties and processing technologies get developed.

Millet Research & Development — Who’s Doing the Science

Every claim on this site — nutrition figures, GI values, variety names — traces back to a research pipeline. This page is a map of the institutions doing that work in India.

ICAR-IIMR — the nodal institute

The Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), based in Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, is India’s nodal research institute for millets, functioning under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). In 2023 it was also designated a Global Centre of Excellence on Millets, reflecting its expanded international remit alongside its domestic research role.

IIMR’s crop-improvement mandate covers sorghum, pearl millet (bajra), finger millet (ragi), foxtail, little, barnyard, proso, and kodo millet — effectively all nine Shree Anna grains. Its work spans:

  • Variety and hybrid development — breeding for yield, drought tolerance, and grain quality
  • Crop production and protection research — agronomy, pest/disease management
  • Processing and value-addition technology — the flour, flaking, and extrusion technologies behind most packaged millet products on the market (see Manufacturing & Value-Add)
  • Nutrihub — IIMR’s own startup-incubation platform for millet food entrepreneurs

The AICRP network

Most on-the-ground variety testing happens through All India Coordinated Research Projects (AICRP) — a network of trial centres spread across the states where each crop is actually grown, coordinated by IIMR:

AICRPApproximate reach
Sorghum & Small MilletsAround 30 centres across roughly 15 states
Pearl MilletAround 13–14 centres across 10 states

These centres run multi-location variety trials — testing candidate varieties under real regional growing conditions before they’re released for farmers to plant, which is why a variety recommended in Rajasthan may differ from one recommended in Karnataka for the same crop.

ICRISAT

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), headquartered in Patancheru near Hyderabad, is a CGIAR research centre (not an Indian government body) with a long history of sorghum and pearl millet breeding, particularly for drought-prone semi-arid regions across India and Africa. Much of the genetic diversity used in Indian breeding programs traces back to ICRISAT’s germplasm collections.

State agricultural universities

Beyond the national institutes, state agricultural universities — for example, in Karnataka, Telangana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu — run their own regional millet breeding and agronomy programs, often as AICRP centres themselves, and are usually the first point of contact for farmers wanting locally-adapted seed and extension advice.

Recent variety releases (2024–2025)

The breeding pipeline keeps producing new biofortified and higher-yielding releases. Examples reported by ICAR-IIMR and its AICRP centres:

  • ABV 04 — a biofortified pearl millet variety developed at ARS Anantapuram under ICAR-AICRP on Pearl Millet, delivering roughly 70 ppm iron and 63 ppm zinc (against 45–50 ppm iron / 30–35 ppm zinc in older popular varieties), maturing in 86 days with yields around 28.6 quintals/hectare grain and 58 quintals/hectare fodder, recommended for kharif cultivation across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Tamil Nadu. IIMR distributed ABV 04 seed with agronomy support to farmers in 2025.
  • CLMV1 — an improved little millet variety bred for higher iron and zinc content.
  • VR 929 (Vegavathi) and CFMV1 (Indravati) / CFMV2 — finger millet varieties released with improved iron/zinc profiles alongside agronomic gains.

These sit alongside ICRISAT’s longer-running work on the world’s first three-way pearl millet hybrid, developed with ICAR partners, and continuing genomic and drought-tolerance research aimed at closing the yield gap under climate stress.

What this research pipeline has produced

  • Higher-yielding varieties and hybrids that have narrowed (though not closed) the yield gap between millets and rice/wheat
  • Biofortified varieties bred for higher iron and zinc content
  • The processing technologies (dehulling ratios, flaking, extrusion) that made packaged millet products commercially viable in the first place
  • The nutrition-composition data (protein, fibre, GI, micronutrients) cited throughout this site, much of which originates from IIMR and NIN Hyderabad testing

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