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The ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (ICAR-CTCRI) was established during the Third Five Year Plan for intensification of research on tuber crops (other than potato). The Institute started functioning on 01 July 1963 with its headquarters (HQ) at Sreekariyam, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. It has one Regional Station (RS) at Bhubaneswar, Odisha which was established in 1976. The All India Coordinated Research Project on Tuber Crops (AICRP TC) was started at ICAR-CTCRI in 1968 for testing and popularizing the location specific tuber crop technologies in various parts of India. It has presently 21 centres including ICAR-CTCRI HQ and Regional Station. The Institute is also one of the centres of the All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Pre and Post-harvest Technology. The ICAR-CTCRI is conducting basic, strategic and applied research on various edible tropical tuber crops.

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Tropical tuber crops (TTC) include cassava, sweet potato, yams, taro, tannia, elephant foot yam, arrowroot, Chinese potato and certain other starchy crops. Most of them are famine reserve crops due to their ability to withstand infertile soils, drought and heat, uncertain rainfall, coupled with probability to delay harvest of tubers until needed. Highly versatile crops, they are food for the household, feed for livestock and raw materials for a wide array of value-added products, from coarse flour to high-tech starch gels to alcohol to biofuel to bioplastics. Many of the world’s nature dependent and food insecure people are highly dependent on these crops as contributing, if not principal, sources of food, nutrition and family income. Though earlier considered as “food of the poor”, they have become multipurpose crops that respond to the priorities of developing countries, to trends in the global economy and to the challenges of climate change. more……

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