Technical change, productivity, and sustainability in irrigated cropping systems of South Asia: Emerging issues in the post‐green revolution Era

Abstract Recent trends in the productivity of South Asia's irrigated cropping systems are reviewed with emphasis on the large, densely populated Indo‐Gangetic plains of Pakistan and India and parts of Bangladesh, where wheat is an important crop. Technical and institutional problems emerging in these areas may seriously impinge on the ability to maintain the gains in food‐grain productivity and sustain the resource base in the next two decades. Future productivity increases in South Asian cropping systems depend on a new strategy that implies profound changes in agricultural research priorities and in the institutions that foster technical change in agriculture.