The series consists of records created by the Agriculture and Rural Development Department (AGR) and its subordinate divisions and units for the years 1978 to 1987. The series also includes records for AGR's successor, the Agriculture, Technology and Natural Resources Department (AGR) for years 1992 and 1995.

The records of AGR from 1978 to 1987 are similar to those of its successor. The records consist almost exclusively of correspondence. A significant amount of the records relates to Bank projects andthe Department's role in their design, preparation, support, and evaluation. Also included are records related to the writing and analysis of technical, research, and issues papers as well as country and sector policy papers by Department staff and Bank staff external to AGR. In some cases, a draft of the paper is included. Records in this series also relate to: budget and work planning; administration; conference and workshop planning and attendance; information exchange (primarily within the Bank); communications and liaison; grant and trust fund negotiation and allocation; CGIAR-related activities; staff missions (often in the form of Terms of Reference and back-to-office reports); and donor meetings.

As noted above (2.3 Archival history), it is likely that the records classification and file titling of the files in this series was done by IISC staff once individual pieces of correspondence were sent to the IISC for filing. Some of the records (approximately one third) were provided with subject- or function-based classification; these files are from May 1992, to July 1993, and are generally very small and in many instances contain only one or two pieces of correspondence. However, the subjects of the records they contain are indistinguishable from the rest of the files in this series which were titled 'Chronological file' and are considerably larger. The files titled 'Chronological file' are from May 1993 to December 1995.