Landraces

Landraces

Subject – Agriculture

Context – Among the winners of this year’s Padma awards is RahibaiPopere, popularly known as Seedmother, from Akole taluka of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. Her Padma Shri is a recognition of her work that has helped save hundreds of landraces (wild varieties of commonly grown crops) at the village level.

Concept –

• Landraces refer to naturally occurring variants of commonly cultivated crops.
• These are as opposed to commercially grown crops, which are developed by selective breeding (hybrids) or through genetic engineering to express a certain trait over others.
  • With hybrid rice and wheat, for example, selective breeding over a period of time has allowed scientists to develop varieties that have higher yield or other desirable traits. Over the years, farmers have adopted these varieties.
• Biodiversity allows a natural mechanism for crops to develop traits to face challenging situations. However, given the large-scale human interference in crop selection, that ability is now lost in most commercially crops.
• Genetic diversity is nature’s survival mechanism. The wider the gene pool, the more the chance of developing a trait that can help in surviving extreme climate events.
• With proper agricultural practices, landraces can give better yield with lower input costs.
• Kalbhat is a unique landrace of scented rice. Over the years, this variant had almost vanished from cultivators’ fields as hybrid variants became popular. It has better climate resilience than popularly grown rice and can withstand flood or drought better.
• Today, landraces survive in only a few rural and tribal pockets, but they too are depleting for want of proper conservation. Traditional knowledge about the way these need to be grown, or how seeds are to be saved, is also vanishing.