This book reports on the current global status of mungbean and its economic importance. Mungbean (Vigna radiata)—also called green gram—is an important food and cash crop in the rice-based farming systems of South and Southeast Asia, but is also grown in other parts of the world. Its short duration, low input requirement and high global demand make mungbean an ideal rotation crop for smallholder farmers. The book describes mungbean collections maintained by various organizations and their utilization, especially with regard to adapting mungbean to new environments. It provides an overview of the progress made in breeding for tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses; nutritional quality enhancement including genomics approaches; and outlines future challenges for mungbean cultivation. In addition, genomic approaches to evaluating the evolutionary relationship between Vigna species and addressing questions concerning domestication, adaptation and genotype–phenotype relationships are also discussed

The world has made enormous progress in the past 50 years toward eliminating hunger and malnutrition. While, in 1960, roughly 30 percent of the world's population suffered from hunger and malnutrition, today less than 20 percent doessome five billion people now have enough food to live healthy, productive lives. Agricultural development has contributed significantly to these gains by increasing food supplies, reducing food prices, and creating new income and employment opportunities for some of the world's poorest people.This book examines where, why, and how past interventions in agricultural development have succeeded. It carefully reviews the policies, programs, and investments in agricultural development that have reduced hunger and poverty across Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the past half century. The 19 successes included here are described in in-depth case studies that synthesize the evidence on the intervention's impact on agricultural productivity and food security, evaluate the rigor with which the evidence was collected, and assess the tradeoffs inherent in each success. Together, these chapters provide evidence of "what works" in agricultural development.

This report presents the findings of a feeding trial based on mungbean supplementation that was conducted among schoolchildren in southern India. The feeding trial lasted one year and included 225 children. Health parameters and physical stamina of children were examined before and after supplementation for three treatment groups and one control group. One treatment group received a traditionally prepared dish with a normal in vitro iron bioavailability at around 7% while two groups received iron bioavailability-enhanced dishes at around 12%. The results indicate that supplementation improved health parameters.

This work is intended for advanced readers interested in methods of sustainable land management - the prevention and control of land degradation. It offers a coherent view of the situation concerning land degradation and the human response to the problem. It is generally recognized that technological solutions alone cannot solve the problems of land degradation. This book discusses the role of land use and land management policies, programmes, insitutional innovations, and economic incentives for the control and prevention of land degradation. Special attention is given to legal issues at the international level and in individual countries.

November 2000 The introduction of green revolution technologies in wheat and rice production in Pakistan's Punjab province reversed the country's food crisis and stimulated rapid agricultural and economic growth. But resource degradation through intensification, monocropping, and mismanagement of water resources has offset much of the productivity effect of technological change. The introduction of green revolution technologies in wheat and rice production in Asia in the mid-1960s reversed the food crisis and stimulated rapid agricultural and economic growth. But the sustain-ability of this intensification strategy is being questioned in light of the heavy use of external inputs and growing evidence of a slowdown in productivity growth and degradation of the resource base. Ali and Byerlee address the critical issue of long-term productivity and the sustainability of Pakistan's irrigated agriculture. To estimate changes in total factor productivity in four production systems of Punjab province, they assemble district-level data on 33 crops, 8 livestock products, and 17 input categories. They find that average annual growth in total factor productivity was moderately high (1.26 percent) for both crops and livestock for the period 1966-94, but observe wide variation in productivity growth by cropping system. A second, disaggregated data set on soil and water quality reveals significant resource degradation. The authors use the two data sets to decompose the effects of technical change and resource degradation through application of a cost function. They find that continuous and widespread resource degradation (as measured by soil and water quality variables) has had a significant negative effect on productivity, especially in the wheat-rice system, where resource degradation has more than offset the productivity effects of technological change. Degradation of the health of the agro-ecosystem was related in part to modern technologies, monocropping, and mismanagement of water resources. The results call for urgent analysis of technology and policy options to arrest the degradation of resources. This paper--a joint product of the Rural Development Department and the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center--is part of a larger effort to support the development of sustainable intensification of irrigated agricultural systems. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "Total Factor Productivity Growth in Post-Green Revolution Agriculture of Pakistan and Northwest India." Mubarik Ali may be contacted at [email protected].