Geographical distribution and impact of backyard chicken varieties in India: A retrospective assessment

In India, many organizations are working on backyard poultry development and propagation in a scattered manner. The overall impact of introducing the improved backyard chicken varieties on National GDP, country chicken population and livelihood improvement was not estimated. Therefore, the present study documents the geospatial distribution of improved chicken varieties, impact on poultry population, their contribution in Indian economy and socio-economic impact on stakeholders of improved chicken varieties developed by ICAR-DPR, Hyderabad and propagated by different organizations spread all over the country. The data collected on distribution of improved chicken varieties over the past 25 years (1992-2017) from the ICAR-Directorate of Poultry Research, Hyderabad (ICAR-DPR), Poultry Seed Project Centres (PSP) and other Government agencies who had taken parent stock from ICAR-DPR, were analysed to estimate the impact of the backyard poultry. A total of 7.56 million improved chicken germplasm (27%) to 20.37 thousand stakeholders from ICAR-DPR, Hyderabad and 1.7 million (6.09%) to 28.38 thousand stakeholders from PSP were distributed during 1992-2017. Other agencies distributed 18.67 million (66.85%) germplasm to 311.17 thousand stakeholders. The majority of the beneficiaries were from southern region (35%) followed by central (23.4%) and eastern (20.8%) region of the country. Out of five varieties, Vanaraja constituted about 52% of the total germplasm followed by Gramapriya (38%). The share of improved chicken germplasm increased from 0.01 (1992) to 0.41% (2012) in the poultry population of India i.e. from 100 to 9433 indices as compared to 100 to 244 of the country. Contribution of improved germplasm (DPR and PSP Centres) to the Indian economy increased from `0.136 billion (8th Five-Year Plan) to `4.462 billion in 12th Five-Year Plan. The average annual contribution (2012-17) was `0.892 billion. The annual higher productivity of birds increased the income leading to socio-economic development of farmers. The study concluded that backyard poultry significantly contributed to the national economy and improved the livelihoods of the rural and tribal people, which needs to be further strengthened across the different geographical regions of the country.