When the World Food Prize Foundation announced its 2025 Top Agri-Food Pioneers list in June 2025, Dr. Manzoor Hussain Dar emerged as one of five Indians among the 39 global honorees. It is a recognition for a career spent solving agriculture’s most persistent challenge: the “last mile” problem.
An award-winning scientist, whose work touches the lives of farmers from India to Mali, Saudi Arabia, and much beyond, Dr. Dar’s breakthrough came in the most unlikely place: a failure.
When 93% of farmers in flood-prone Orissa rejected superior flood-resistant rice varieties despite free access through traditional networks, most agricultural scientists might have blamed farmer ignorance or cultural resistance. Instead, Dr. Dar saw a systems failure and an opportunity to revolutionize how agricultural innovations reach those who need them most.
While laboratories around the world develop breakthrough crop varieties and revolutionary farming techniques, these innovations often fail to reach the farmers who need them most.
Dr. Dar, Global Head of Seed Systems at ICRISAT, has dedicated his career to bridging this critical gap between scientific innovation and farmer adoption. Today, Dr. Dar’s work has reached over 6 million farmers across South Asia, transforming how agricultural innovations spread through farming communities. His approach combines rigorous scientific methodology with practical market understanding, creating evidence-based models that other organizations now replicate globally.
(Image: Supplied)
But his impact extends far beyond impressive numbers: he’s fundamentally changed how research institutions think about farmer adoption.
His breakthrough innovation, the large-scale dissemination of flood-tolerant rice varieties like Swarna-Sub1, directly addressed a critical vulnerability faced by millions of smallholder farmers whose livelihoods were repeatedly disrupted by seasonal flooding. Through collaborative partnerships spanning research institutions, national agricultural systems, NGOs, and private sector actors, Dr. Dar developed targeted seed dissemination strategies that have since become the gold standard for climate-smart innovation scaling.
Currently at ICRISAT, Dr. Dar is tackling India’s next major agricultural challenge: reducing the country’s billion-dollar annual imports of oilseeds and pulses. His work focuses on scaling production of critical crops like sunflower, pigeonpea, and groundnut by developing robust seed systems and conducting large-scale demonstrations of improved varieties.
Through initiatives like the rice fallows intensification project in Odisha, he has brought over 175,000 hectares of fallow land under productive cultivation, benefiting over 250,000 farmers. What sets Dr. Dar apart is his recognition that farmers aren’t just end-users: they’re valuable sources of knowledge who understand their local environments better than anyone.
His work systematically captures on-the-ground knowledge about climate impacts and emerging challenges, feeding this back to breeding programs to ensure new varieties are more relevant, resilient, and adaptable to real-world conditions.
In an exclusive interview with The Fourth Plate, Dr Dar explains his work and future goals. Excerpts:
THE FOURTH PLATE: Could you provide a brief overview in your own words about your work?
Dr. DAR: My work focuses on advancing the adoption of agricultural innovations, particularly climate-resilient crop varieties, to strengthen food security and resilience among farming communities. Through international collaboration and rigorous research, I have explored and developed effective, data-driven strategies to guide evidence-based policy advocacy. This includes leveraging innovative extension approaches, digital tools, and strategic partnerships to enhance the reach and impact of agricultural technologies.
At ICRISAT, I am currently involved in impactful seed systems research aimed at supporting large-scale adoption and varietal replacement in the dryland areas where the need for resilient crops is especially urgent. These combined efforts have directly contributed to the formation of several policy-driven initiatives, facilitating the large-scale adoption of improved crop varieties by millions of farmers across diverse regions.
During Dr. Dar’s visit to Purulia, West Bengal to study the challenges faced by farmers in a harsh dryland agricultural ecosystem.
THE FOURTH PLATE: What specific breakthrough or innovation in your work has had the most measurable impact on food security or farmer livelihoods?
Dr. DAR: One of the most impactful breakthroughs in my work has been the large-scale dissemination of flood-tolerant rice varieties, such as the Swarna-Sub1, across flood-prone regions in South Asia. This innovation directly addressed a critical vulnerability faced by millions of smallholder farmers whose livelihoods were repeatedly disrupted by seasonal flooding.
Through collaborative partnerships with research institutions, national agricultural systems, NGOs, and private sector actors, we developed and implemented a targeted seed dissemination and extension strategy. By combining robust field validation, community-based seed systems, and policy engagement to support favourable seed distribution frameworks, we were able to reach millions of farmers in vulnerable areas.
This led to improved household food security, income stability, and resilience to climate shocks, demonstrating how climate-smart innovations, when scaled effectively, can transform livelihoods at scale.
Building on this success, my current work at ICRISAT focuses on scaling newly developed short duration, climate resilient and nutrition rich varieties of pulses, millets and legumes to diversify Indian agriculture. We are actively engaged in designing strategies for pre-release promotion and awareness campaigns to generate early demand and visibility.
This proactive approach is critical to ensuring that these innovations reach the farmers who need them most, facilitating rapid adoption and maximizing their impact in the drylands where food systems are particularly vulnerable.
THE FOURTH PLATE: What’s the biggest systemic barrier you’ve encountered in scaling your solution, and how are you addressing it?
Dr. DAR: One of the biggest systemic barriers we’ve faced in scaling the adoption of improved seed varieties has been the lack of an effective mechanism to assess actual seed demand from farmers, especially in regions where these innovations could have the greatest impact.
Without clear, localized demand signals, it becomes challenging to align production, distribution, and promotion efforts, often leading to mismatches in supply and missed opportunities for impact.
To address this, we focused on strengthening communication and coordination among key stakeholders like research institutions, extension agencies, seed producers, NGOs, and policymakers. By creating platforms for dialogue and joint planning, we aimed to bring these actors on board early in the seed promotion process. This helped ensure that demand assessments were more farmer-centred, responsive, and informed by ground realities. As a result, the dissemination strategies became more targeted and efficient, ultimately improving access to the seeds where they were most needed and enhancing overall adoption outcomes.
Dr Dar during his visit to Mali, for discussions about crop breeding strategy for the Sahel Region, with his colleagues Bright Jumbo and Riyazuddin.
THE FOURTH PLATE: Can you quantify the reach of your research – how many farmers or hectares have been directly impacted by your varieties/technologies?
Dr. DAR: Through collaborative efforts, my research has directly impacted the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers across South Asia. One notable example is the dissemination of flood-tolerant rice varieties such as Swarna-Sub1, which has reached over 6 million farmers across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
In recent years through the rice fallows intensification project in Odisha, I have managed introducing short-duration, high-yielding pulses and oilseeds varieties into traditionally uncultivated post-rice areas. This initiative along with other projects has brought more than 175,000 hectares of fallow land under productive cultivation, benefiting over 250,000 farmers. These interventions not only improved cropping intensity and farm incomes but also contributed to better nutrition outcomes and resilience in some of the most climate-sensitive agro-ecologies of the region.
THE FOURTH PLATE: What’s your next major research priority, and why is it critical for the next decade?
Dr. DAR: My next major research priority is to find the best approaches for scaling the production of key oilseed and pulse crops such as sunflower, pigeonpea, urdbean, and groundnut, which are critical for both national food security and economic sustainability. India currently spends billions of dollars annually on the import of these commodities, despite having the agroecological potential to produce them domestically at scale.
To address this gap, my focus is on developing and implementing strategies for robust seed systems strategies and conducting large-scale demonstrations of improved varieties and associated technologies that fit in the most profitable cropping systems for the farmers.
By ensuring that farmers have timely access to high-quality seeds and knowledge on best agronomic practices, we can significantly boost the domestic production of these crops. This work is critical not only for enhancing farmer incomes and crop diversification but also for reducing the country’s reliance on imports and thus making it a strategic priority for the coming decade.
THE FOURTH PLATE: What collaboration or partnership has been most crucial to your work’s success?
Dr. DAR: One of the most crucial elements of my work’s success has been the ability to identify and collaborate with strategic partners who bring complementary strengths, enabling us to add value to each other’s efforts and work collectively toward large-scale impact. Partnerships between international agricultural research centres, national agricultural research systems (NARS), extension agencies, NGOs, and private sector actors have been instrumental in translating innovations into adoption at scale. For instance, in the dissemination of flood-tolerant rice varieties, collaboration with national research institutes, and local seed and extension systems allowed us to align research outputs with farmer needs and policy priorities. Likewise, in my current work at ICRISAT, we strategically engage with state agricultural departments, seed corporations, farmer producer organizations (FPOs), and market actors to build resilient seed systems for crops such as pigeonpea and groundnut.
THE FOURTH PLATE: Given the accelerating pace of climate change, how are you calibrating your work to address the environmental stress?
Dr. DAR: Given the accelerating pace of climate change, a critical part of my work has been to strengthen the feedback loop between farmers and crop breeders. Farmers are often the first to observe shifts in weather patterns, pest pressures, and changes in growing conditions.
I’ve made it a priority to systematically capture and bring this on-the-ground knowledge about climate impacts and emerging challenges back to the breeding programs. This ensures that breeders can tailor new varieties to real-world conditions, making them more relevant, resilient, and adaptable.
In parallel, we are also intensifying the testing of new varieties under diverse and evolving climatic conditions across different agro-ecologies. This approach allows us to identify the most climate-resilient and location-specific varieties, ensuring that the technologies we promote are robust and future-ready. By aligning farmer experiences, scientific breeding, and adaptive trialing, we aim to build a more climate-smart agricultural system that can better withstand environmental stresses while sustaining farmer livelihoods.
THE FOURTH PLATE: If you could implement one policy change globally, that would create the biggest positive impact in your field?
Dr. DAR: It would be to institutionalize the involvement of farmers in the process of varietal testing, selection, and recommendation through a collaborative, data-driven approach. Farmers are not just end-users, they are valuable sources of knowledge who understand their local environments, preferences, and challenges better than anyone. A policy that mandates and supports participatory varietal evaluation, combined with digital tools and data systems to capture farmer feedback at scale, would ensure that new varieties are more relevant, acceptable, and likely to be adopted.
THE FOURTH PLATE: If you could suggest one impact action globally, that would create the biggest positive impact in your field?
Dr. DAR: It would be to actively bring the private sector on board in all stages of emerging crop research and development. While public research institutions have played a foundational role in crop innovation, the private sector brings complementary strengths in scaling, investment, market access, and last-mile delivery. However, for many underutilized or emerging crops such as pulses and oilseeds, their involvement has traditionally been limited.
By creating enabling policies, public-private partnerships, and shared innovation platforms, we can unlock the commercial potential of these crops, drive faster varietal turnover, and ensure that improved seeds and technologies reach farmers more efficiently. Private sector engagement is also essential for building sustainable seed systems, creating demand through value chain development, and ensuring the long-term viability of research investments.
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