The overall objective of the National Agricultural Innovation Project for India is to contribute to the sustainable transformation of Indian agricultural sector from an orientation of primarily food self-sufficiency to one in which a market orientation is equally important for poverty alleviation and income generation. The closing date for the project will be extended from December 31, 2012 until June 30, 2014. The main rationale for the extension is two-fold: First, it took 18 months longer to approve and ground all the 188 sub-projects since the actual number turned out to be three times what was expected at appraisal. Second, India experienced a serious drought in 2009 and, as a result, most of the experiments related to crops had to be repeated. The extension is necessary to implement the project as planned and achieve the project development objectives.