Community Seed Banking and Importance of Germplasm Conservation in North East India

Abstract

Under the influence of profit-oriented commercial agriculture, cultivation of genetically uniform high yielding varieties and hybrids gets more promotion, which considerably reduces the cultivation of diverse traditional landraces. Several important traditional landraces are even lost or are on the verge of extinction. These traditional landraces harbor the various important resistance genes/alleles against abiotic and biotic stresses, and are also the source of genetic variability for important quality traits. Biodiversity of Northeastern India is also under threat as farmers are moving towards commercial agriculture, which necessitates in-situ conservation of all available diversity of various crops by farmers and tribal communities to achieve the goals of sustainable agriculture in the face of changing climate and other impending biotic and abiotic stresses. Community Seed Banking (CSB) is one of the important methods to conserve agro biodiversity. The concept of CSB, it’s functioning, utility and other associated aspects have been elaborated in this article.