Apart from rice, India is home to a number of food crops like cucurbits and other vegetables, legumes, mangoes, bananas and other fruits. The Green Revolution which brought increases in food production also resulted in the loss of several thousand crop varieties. Unfortunately, little effort was made to conserve this germplasm that was being lost from farmers’ fields. More recently, a Seed Exchange Program has been undertaken in Jharkhand, with the objective of promoting HYV and hybrid rice for supposedly higher yields. Under this program, farmers are to deposit seeds of their traditional rice varieties and take an equal amount of hybrid or HYV seeds. There is no provision to conserve the traditional rice seeds collected. This is resulting in even greater loss of rice genetic diversity in an area where substantial rice diversity is still found. Given that agro biodiversity is recognized to be one of the key underpinnings of global food security and its conservation is a key concern, this is a major focus of Gene Campaign’s work. Today as the effects of climate change become more visible and there is a growing understanding of the damage that global warming can inflict on agriculture, especially in South Asia and Africa, the importance of agro biodiversity in adapting to new agriculture zones cannot be overemphasized.

Project Activities

I. In situ and Ex situ Conservation of Agro biodiversity

Ex situ Conservation

Four village level Gene-Seed banks have been set up under the one year FNPP project for ex situ conservation of agro biodiversity of the region.

Setting up Community Seed Banks