The major benefits of the Green Revolution in India were experienced mainly in
northern and northwestern India between 1965 and the early 1980s. The Programme
resulted in a substantial increase in the production of food grains, mainly wheat and rice.
Food grain yields continued to increase throughout the 1980s, but the dramatic changes
in the years between1965 and 1980 were not duplicated. By 1980, almost 75 per cent of
the total cropped area under wheat was sown with HYV. For rice, the comparable figure
was 45 per cent. In the 1980s, the area under HYV continued to increase, but the rate of
growth overall was slower. The Eighth Five Year Plan aimed at making HYV available
to the whole country and developing more productive strains of other crops.