Agricultural Research in India - A Profile Based on CAB Abstracts 1990-1994

Abstract

India's contribution to research in agriculture and related fields is assessed from an analysis of publications indexed in CAB Abstracts. CAB Abstracts indexed 51,761 papers, including about 48,300 journal articles, from more than 3,330 addresses in over 800 locations, spread over 30 states/ union territories of India, in the five years 1990-1994. CAB Abstracts has classified these papers into 22 major research areas and about 250 subfields. Plants of economic importance is the leading area of research in India, followed by Animal science. The largest number of papers published are in the three subfields, viz. Pests, pathogens and biogenic diseases of plants (8,898 papers), Plant breeding and genetics (5,675 papers) and Plant production (5,231 papers). A little over 63% of these papers were published by academic institutions. Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, and the Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar, have contributed more than 2370 papers each, not including papers published from other centres of these universities. Agricultural universities have published 16,555 papers and general universities 9,933. The Indian Council of Agricultural Research has accounted for 7,856 papers. Indian researchers have used more than 1950 journals from over 65 countries. About 77% of all journal articles were published in 483 Indian journals. In no other field did Indian researchers publish such a large percent of papers in Indian journals. Unlike in physics and materials science, Indian agricultural scientists have used letters journals only infrequently. Delhi, Ludhiana, Hissar and Bangalore are the leading centres of agricultural research, while Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra. Tamil Nadu, Haryana and Karnataka are the states accounting for the largest number of papers. This report was prepared by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Institute and was submitted to NISSAT, Department of Scientific & Industrial Research, Government of India in July 1998.