Established on September 20, 1924, Indian Lac Research Institute had been the nodal Institute at national level for providing research and development support to all aspects of lac such as production, processing, product development, technology dissemination, information repository and national and international cooperation. It has immensely contributed towards all round development of lac besides maintaining India`s leadership in production, installed processing capacity and export. The Institute had been under administrative control of Indian Lac Association for Research (20.09.1924 to 31.7.1931), Indian Lac Cess Committee (1.8.1931 to 31.3.1966) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research since 1.4.1966.

The Institute hitherto had been providing R&D support only to lac, which is the only source of natural resin of animal origin. It was proposed to include plant resins and gums also under the purview of the institute in view of production systems, economy and application areas, which were largely overlapping for lac and other natural resins and gums. This expansion enabled creation of a single national organization addressing the research and development needs of this class of natural materials, which were receiving greater attention due to increasing demand for natural products safer to human health and environment. The mandate of this Institute was therefore, expanded to include all natural resins and gums, besides lac and the name of the institute was changed to Indian Institute of Natural Resins and Gums (IINRG) on September 20, 2007. Adequate R & D support to this sub-sector enabled India to emerge as the leader in some more resins and gums besides maintaining leadership in lac, guar gum and karaya gum.

Presently, value addition of the produce and utilizing the crop residues is attaining high priority. Secondary Agriculture is high value addition to primary agriculture. It helps in using all parts of an agricultural produce (e.g. crop residues, animal hair, bones, viscera, etc), processing to enhance shelf-life, increasing total factor productivity, and generating additional jobs and income for farmers. Certain alternative agriculture activities like lac culture, beekeeping, mushroom cultivation, agri-tourism, etc, also fall under the ambit of secondary agriculture. By-products from agricultural crops, if processed appropriately for deriving industrial products could pave a way in getting better economic returns from agriculture. The advancement in technologies, equipment, and processes would enable enhanced secondary agriculture practices giving range of materials of better quality, yield, nutrition, and convenience. Hence, the secondary agriculture and the bioprocessing have potential to give a strong boost to the economy, societal status and environmental protection.

Keeping in view the importance of secondary agriculture in rural industrialization in order to improve farmer's income, it was proposed to further widen the mandate of the IINRG. Therefore, the Governing Body of ICAR Society in its 256th meeting approved the proposal and the new name of the Institute as National Institute of Secondary Agriculture. Consequent to this decision of the Council, Indian Institute of Natural Resins and Gums has been rechristened as National Institute of Secondary Agriculture (NISA) w.e.f. September, 20, 2022.

Though, the institute would keep on working on the production and value edition of natural resins and gums, widening of the mandate would bring a lot of new responsibilities and open newer vistas of research. The institute would need to set its priorities and focus on value addition of prioritized commodities, sustainable utilization of the by-products and waste minimization to substantially reduce the environmental pollution besides creating wealth from the waste. Mere change in name will not enthuse and create newer opportunities - strengthening of the research infrastructure and required additional manpower dedicated to secondary agriculture and establishing regional stations in different agro-climatic regions would be the first requisite to bring out positive outcome in the near future. Relocating of CRP on Secondary Agriculture from CIPHET, Ludhiana to NISA, Ranchi as envisioned in the proposal would be the first justifiable action to initiate the NISA towards newer vision. Mandate and objectives of the institute would require to be drafted carefully keeping in mind the priorities under newer vision and mission.

This transformation of IINRG to NISA is work in progress. To become a world class institution would require collective thinking, dynamic leadership and wholehearted support from the Council.