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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Blinded by higher yields

Blinded by higher yields

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published Published on Apr 20, 2016   modified Modified on Apr 20, 2016
-The Pioneer

Local crop varieties are resilient but ignored

Recent reports that well-known plant scientist Debal Deb has found a traditional rice variety in West Bengal that contains silver and has medicinal properties, has aroused public interest. Who knew that a rice grain, or for that matter any plant variety, could naturally assimilate the precious metal from the soil? The discovery is a humbling reminder of the many mysteries that nature continues to hold, even though mankind has made great progress in understanding the world it inhabits.

More significantly, it is an important indication of how answers to some of the biggest environment-related challenges we face today, including climate change and extreme weather conditions, lie within the environment itself — if we are willing to look more carefully. The key word here is crop diversity. Garib Sal, the rice variety that Deb has discovered, is just one of the over 1,00,000 different kinds of rice that were once grown across the country. Each of these landraces had its own flavour and characteristics, and was in consonance with local soil, weather and water conditions. Today, less than 6,000 landraces exist — and fewer are being cultivated with every passing year. They are replaced by high-yielding variety seeds. The problem with HYV seeds is that, while under ideal conditions, they do yield a significantly bigger produce, they are fragile with a poor natural defence system.

This makes them vulnerable to all sorts of threats (from little known pests to weather variations) and, hence, unreliable. In comparison, the traditional varieties yield less but are more resilient and also have greater nutritional and medicinal value. For example, Deb hosts six varieties of salt-tolerant rice at his seed bank which were re-introduced in the Sunderbans and were the only ones to survive the disastrous 2009 cyclone, Aila. He also points to the Badshah Sal rice, which has 138mg of iron per kilogramme; much higher than Monsanto's MS-13 (7mg of iron per kilogramme). Unfortunately, much of this crop diversity has been lost, as HYV seeds, which are also genetically homogenous, have taken over, especially in the decades since the Green Revolution (which itself is now beginning to unravel).

India is no exception to this global trend. Studies indicate that if it has lost 90 per cent of rice varieties since 1900, the US has lost a similar percentage of its fruit and vegetable varieties since 1900; Mexico has lost about 80 per cent of its corn varieties since 1900 while China has lost 90 per cent of rice varieties since 1950. Moreover, this problem extends to the animal kingdom as well. Once home to the most genetically diverse pool of cows and buffaloes, India's native dairy breeds — for example, the Red Sindhi, Sahiwal and Tharparker — which are raised mostly on small farms, may soon be extinct. Meanwhile, foreign cross-breeds that are growing every year are yet to adapt to Indian conditions and have to be kept in air-conditioned shelters.

The Pioneer, 19 April, 2016, http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/edit/blinded-by-higher-yields.html


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