Three types of experiments were carried out in colonial India that made a long-term impact on the future of agrarian modernization in sovereign India. One was the colonial state’s investment in irrigation canals that spurred the rise of three distinct agrarian regions. The agriculture in these regions was supported by a new wave of scientism in colonial policy in the early twentieth century as the colonial state utilized Mendelian science to develop and propagate better varieties of wheat in north India. Towards the end of colonial rule, the colonialists also experimented with a project of intensification wherein select districts were provided concentrated inputs to raise yield. On the margins of colonial patterns, the American missionaries set up an agricultural institute in the United Provinces that experimented with rural uplift through a program of teaching, research, and low-cost innovations. This program did not just showcase an alternate program in rural modernization in the colony, but also served as a precursor to the import of Americanist agrarian ideals into India after independence.