Besides being home to over one billion people and the world’s second fastest growing economy, India’s appetite for pulses could create unprecedented demand for Western Australia produce.

Director of the University of Western Australia based Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture, Kadambot Siddique, recently returned from a month in India, where he learned that their government hopes to meet escalating nutritional needs from a dwindling arable land base.

Projections for 2020 suggest India will try to reach its goal of 300 million tonnes of grain from just 100 million hectares – 70 million ha less than today.

Supported by growers and the Federal Government through the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), Professor Siddique saw how research was aiming to drive productivity to match climbing local demand from improved varieties and farming systems.

Chances are that, despite research endeavours, India will need to supplement local production with increasing imports. Those imports could rise rapidly as consumption grows in step with India’s expanding middle and high income sector.

Already, 30 per cent of Indian households have ascended to those income brackets.

From 2000 to 2002, Western Australia’s apple exports to India increased more than five fold and the Department of Agriculture suggest this could double again in 2003. Could pulses follow suit? Agricultural produce already has a reputation in India, with vegetables and wool among Australia’s five most popular exports to that destination.

An interesting finding from the GRDC supported Indian tour was the discovery that the Indian Government plans to promote the use of ‘gasohol’, a five per cent ethanol/95 per cent petrol fuel mix. The move is intended to help build new markets for local crops.

Similar ‘biofuels’ can be extracted from Australian canola crops. Although conventional canola varieties produce oil which is too good to waste on cars and trucks, high yielding, low quality rapeseed crops would also produce oil for fuel.