Farm R&D Drove a Third of India's ₹1.7-Trillion Agricultural Output Rise in 2025: ICAR

India's total agricultural output — spanning field crops, horticulture, livestock, and fisheries — grew by ₹1.7 trillion in value between 2024 and 2025, according to a presentation delivered by ICAR Director-General M.L. Jat at the institute's 98th Foundation Day on 27 July.

Of that total, ICAR attributes roughly ₹55,000 crore to agricultural research and technology, including higher-yielding seed varieties, improved germplasm for horticulture, mechanisation advances, and extension activities. The remaining two-thirds of the output gain was split roughly equally between government development programmes and schemes on one hand, and farmers' own labour and effort on the other.

Jat was explicit that the three-way attribution is an informed estimate rather than a precise measure, but argued the framework is robust enough to illustrate the economic scale of returns from public agricultural research — a contribution that typically goes unrecognised when research outcomes are reported only as variety counts or technology releases.

ICAR's analysis disaggregates the ₹1.7-trillion output increase across four broad sub-sectors:

• Crops: Production rose by approximately 19 million tonnes (mt), generating an estimated additional output value of ₹60,000 crore.
• Horticulture: Output grew by 7 mt, valued at around ₹20,000 crore — reflecting improved germplasm and protected cultivation technologies.
• Livestock (milk, meat, and eggs, excluding fisheries): The economic value of incremental production was put at ₹50,000 crore.
• Fisheries (inland and sea combined): Output climbed by 1.4 mt, from 18.40 mt in 2024 to 19.77 mt in 2025, adding approximately ₹40,000 crore in value — underscoring fisheries' status as one of the fastest-growing sub-sectors in Indian agriculture.

Collectively, these four streams sum to the ₹1,70,000 crore figure that ICAR used as its denominator for the one-third attribution to R&D. Importantly, Jat clarified that this figure represents only the year-on-year increment in output value, not total agricultural production.

ICAR's framing of research impact in economic terms is deliberate: the institution estimates a return of ₹13.85 for every ₹1 invested in agricultural research, a figure intended to shift the policy conversation from inputs to outcomes.

The contrast with actual budget allocations is stark. The FY27 outlay for agricultural research and education stands at ₹9,266 crore — a sum that is 44 times smaller than the combined food, fertiliser, and fuel subsidy bill for the same year.

Jat acknowledged that production gains are conventionally credited to development departments and government schemes, while the enabling role of research — new varieties, precision machines, and knowledge networks — rarely receives comparable recognition. The 98th Foundation Day presentation, which also highlighted ICAR's target of 1,20,000 quintals of breeder seed production for 2025-26 and 365 research-backed crop varieties released in 2025, was partly designed to address that gap by quantifying research outcomes in rupee terms.

The attribution methodology, as explained by Jat, begins by estimating the value of incremental output for each sub-sector individually — crops, horticulture, livestock, and fisheries — and then aggregating them to a total. The next step involves estimating what share of that increment can be reasonably credited to new seeds, improved species and varieties, mechanisation, and allied research inputs versus government expenditure on schemes and the direct contribution of farmers.

The three-way split — research, policy, and farmer effort — is described by ICAR as broadly equal, with research receiving at least one-third on the logic that enhanced investment or effort alone, without improved technologies, would not have generated comparable production gains. Research also encompasses knowledge generated and disseminated through ICAR's network of institutions across the country.

Jat was careful to note the figure is indicative and could reasonably vary, but maintained it is sufficient to establish the order of magnitude of returns from public agricultural research — a point he said is often lost when research is reported purely through the lens of variety pipelines or patent counts.