Overview of Plant Breeding Division

Plant Breeding Division (PBD) is one of the most potential and old division of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) leading research on varietal development of barley, foxtail millet, proso millet, finger millet, pearl millet, sorghum, buckwheat, oats, chia and quinoa. Plant Breeding Division promotes sustainable agricultural development in Bangladesh through collaborative and responsive research. The division has strong collaboration with international organizations like ICARDA and ICRISAT as well as national organizations like DAE and BADC. The research mandate of the division is to create new improve varieties and fitting technologies for the development of these field crops  to the benefit of the farmers of drought, char and saline soil.

Till now, PBD has developed nine barley, four foxtail millet, one proso millet, one sorghum, one raghi and one oat varieties. At present the major research thrust of the division is on high yielding location specific stress tolerant varietal development of minor cereals. PBD is performing climate smart research to face adverse climatic condition and meet up the nutritional and food demand of Bangladesh and emphasized on abiotic stress tolerant varietal development of minor cereals for drought, heat and salt tolerant. Molecular excavating of the existing materials is also on going to identify abiotic stress tolerant mechanism to utilize the problematic fallow areas to intensify the cropping pattern.