Among the edible oilseed crops, rapeseed-mustard occupies a prominent position in India accounting nearly 6 million hectares of land under cultivation which produces approximately 5.8 million tonnes of oil seeds annually. In India, it is an important cooking medium and a source of dietary fat for majority of the population inhabiting northern, western and north-eastern states.

Among the salient achievements of this centre, a high yielding mustard variety, named, ‘Pusa Jai Kisan’ has been developed through tissue culture technique, called somaclonal variation. A popular commercially released variety, Varuna (Type 59) was used as a donor parent for generating somaclonal variation.