The Indian Council of Agricultural Research was established in 1929 as an autonomous clearinghouse-type organization charged with conducting, aiding, promoting, and coordinating agricultural and animal husbandry research. It has seventy-six institutes, bureaus, centers, and project directorates and seventy-one nationwide coordinated research projects. Education programs are mostly operated through India's twenty-six agricultural universities. The council has administrative links to the Department of Agricultural Research and Education of the Ministry of Agriculture (see Development Programs, ch. 7).
The council supports numerous research institutes throughout the states and union territories. They include laboratories doing research on arid zones, birds, aquaculture, cattle, agroengineering, horticulture, wool, salinity, soils, veterinary science, animal and plant genetics, land use, dairy production, and a variety of crops, including rice, jute, cotton, tobacco, oilseeds, potatoes, and others.
Data as of September 1995