Mandate
Inventory, characterization and documentation of range resources.

Ecological evaluation of range species for different land use systems.

Technology generation for establishment, improvement, management and utilization of grasslands/silvopastures/hortipastures.

Five major grass covers and their subtypes have been identified as a result of country wide reconnaissance survey of grasslands. Opportunities exist for upgrading the productivity of these grass covers from the existing level of 2.0 - 5.0 t/ha to 4.0 - 8.0 t/ha dry matter.

Moderate grazing coupled with nutrient application proved a good management technique for tropical grasslands. Deferred rotational grazing had distinct advantage in carrying capacity (2925 grazing days) over continuous grazing system (2097 grazing days). The economical dose of nitrogen application was 40 - 60 kg/ha in 2 - 3 equal splits (depending on rainfall) at 20 - 25 days interval during monsoon.

204 accessions involving 10 species of Leucaena (of which 136 accessions belonged to L. leucocephala) were collected from different parts of the world and evaluated for various yield and quality traits. Several selections like Silvi-4 were adjudged better than K8 and K28, the popular exotic varieties. L. collinsii was found psyllid resistant.

Silvopasture systems were designed and developed for increasing productivity of degraded lands. A minimum of 2.5 times improvement in land productivity was found with use of such systems compared to the prevailing traditional practices. Similarly, compared to degraded rangelands such systems provided more than 10 times biomass in a rotation of 10-12 years. Environmental impact of these systems has shown reduction in soil loss to less than one tenth compared to the bare soil.

Suitable hortipastoral combinations have been developed for rainfed regions. These combinations were more profitable than plantation of only fruit trees on similar situations.