Seeds of Tradition

Debal Deb

on behalf of

Debal Deb in association with

Debdulal Bhattacharya, Kamala Kanta Jana, Rabindranath Mahato, Rajkumar Pramanik, Arun Ram and Sanjay Sinha

on behalf of

Vrihi

Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, A-60 Hauz Khas, New Delhi

2005

SEEDS OF TRADITION, SEEDS OF FUTURE: FOLK RICE VARIETIES OF EASTERN INDIA by Debal Deb in association with Debdulal Bhattacharya, Kamala Kanta Jana, Rabindranath Mahato, Rajkumar Pramanik, Arun Ram and Sanjay Sinha on behalf of Vrihi

© Vrihi, 2005

Vrihi, a consortium of indigenous farmers, scientists and social workers, holds the copyright of this document on behalf of all farmers of eastern India who are the keepers and custodians of the indigenous crop genetic diversity as a collective resource.

Published by NAVDANYA/Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, A-60 Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016

Contents

Why this publication

1

The Biology and Ecology of the Indian Rice

3

Setting the Context: The Erosion of Folk Crop Genetic Diversity

6

Concerns for Rice Genetic Diversity Conservation

8

Documentation of Folk Rice Varieties of West Bengal

12

Materials and Methods

14

Salient Findings

18

Acknowledgements

24

References

25

Appendix 1

29

Appendix 2

40

Appendix 3

77

Index

78

Why this publication

I

n view of the current WTO regime fostering biopiracy of indigenous peoples’ resources and knowledge base, a measure of legal protection of indigenous biodiversity from biopirates is urgently required. Most biopiracy patents are logically and legally untenable, as they systematically violate the patentability clauses of Novelty and Prior public knowledge. However, challenging each such patent at the Western courts of law would imply that the piracy has to be proved at the cost of people whose traditional knowledge has been purloined. Moreover, no mechanism exists to punish the biopirates even after the theft has been proved. This confers an advantage upon the wealthy biopirates and a considerable handicap on indigenous peoples. The possibility of biopiracy is further scaffolded by the clause of “prior public knowledge” which construes “published documents” as delimited by the Western ignorance. Biopiracy patents facilitate appropriation of centuries of “undocumented” knowledge, much of which is actually quite well documented in non-Western texts. Furthermore, while all indigenous cultures are characterized by rich oral traditions, the documentary requisite of the new Western patent regime seeks to usurp indigenous oral traditions, innovations and knowledge sharing modes. The WTO/TRIPs regime legitimizes attempts of trans-national corporations (TNCs) not only to usurp indigenous biodiversity, it also seeks to abrogate farmers’ right to grow their farm-saved seeds and undermine the sovereignty and food security of biodiversity-rich countries. However, this regime has also engendered globalization of people’s resistance to corporatocracy. Indeed, anti-WTO resistance movements all the world over endorse what Raja Rammohan Roy wrote in 1821: “Enemies to liberty and friends of despotism have never been and never will be ultimately successful.” This effort is a part of the country-wide movement to resist biopiracy and assert people’s collective rights to their heritage and innovations. The movement for local sovereignty over biodiversity – the Jaiv Panchayat movement – is upholding people’s fundamental rights to their resources and knowledge through Community Biodiversity Registers (CBRs). The necessity and value of CBRs are also pitted in the current Biodiversity Act of 2004, which requires that all components of biodiversity existing in a locality be documented and registered as a legitimate evidence of people’s knowledge and right to use local biodivesity. This document constitutes a special form of CBR, which registers a significant part of indigenous agro-biodiversity of eastern India. Vrihi, a consortium of farmers, scientists and environmental activists, holds the copyright of this work, with a view to preventing any commercial use of the body of knowledge contained in the book. This book is a revised and enlarged edition of its first

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version entitled Folk Rice Varieties of West Bengal: Agronomic and Morphological Characteristics, published in 2000. This edition is copyrighted afresh, because the number of folk rice varieties described in this edition is more than double that of the first edition, and covers four more States of eastern India. It also contains several new pieces of information that may be useful for farmers, students, and conservationists. The new title of the book reflects its new information content. Our book is an outcome of efforts and contributions of a large number of farmer activists, and is the country’s first published crop biodiversity database whose copyright is registered in the name of a consortium of farmers and scientists. The database is comprised by a range of agronomic and morphological characteristics, and economic and cultural uses, of 416 indigenous rice varieties of eastern India, varieties that are conserved in situ and freely distributed from Vrihi’s seed exchange centre among farmers. Vrihi, in partnership with NAVDANYA, the national movement for agro-biodiversity conservation, is committed to protecting people’s collective heritage of biological diversity from biopirates. This publication is meant to preempt intellectual property claims being mounted by TNCs on the rice genome, and aims to express the obvious fact that the gene giants do not own folk crop variety seeds: the farmers as a collective do. The indigenous rice genetic diversity depicted herein has been, and continues to be, maintained and enriched by farmers, who supplied the genetic material to Vrihi for in situ conservation, documentation and research. The authors and the publisher of this document solemnly declare that any part of the information contained herein may be used freely by any person or organisation for all non-commercial purposes; contrariwise, no part of the data and information and the material documented herein can be reproduced in any form whatsoever, or used for any kind of research, documentation and transcription by any person or organisation pertaining to, or affiliated to, any corporate body. Vrihi, the community of farmers, scientists, and environmental activists, holds the copyright of this document on behalf of all farmers of India who are the keepers and custodians of crop genetic diversity as a collective resource.

2

The Origin, Biology and Ecology of Indian Rice Rice belongs to the genus Oryza, which includes two species (O. sativa and O. glaberrima) that are cultivated. The Asian rice (Oryza sativa) was first domesticated in India and China between 8000 and 15000 years ago (Normille 2004; OGTR 2004), and is presently the most widely grown of the two cultivated rice species. It is grown in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, while the other species, O. glaberrima is restricted only to West African countries. Ninety percent of all rice is grown and consumed in Asia. Recent research has established that progenitors of the Asian rice were Asian species, namely, the perennial O. rufipogon and the annual O. nivara. Oryza sativa has the smallest genome of all food crops, with twelve pairs of chromosomes (2n = 24), and relatively small number (430 million) of base pairs (Chang 2003). Variability in molecular structures of key enzymes is an important source of genetic variability in the wild rice, which probably led to the evolution of Oryza sativa (Sampath 1985; Oka 1994). Ancient farmers selected random mutations of the wild rice for different agronomic characteristics like non-shedding grains or bolder grains to procure more food (Oka 1988). Centuries of rice domestication and farmer experiments have created an astonishing number of its landraces. Over 62,000 landraces of the Indian rice (Oryza sativa var. indica) have been recorded from the Indian subcontinent, most of which are maintained in the International Rice Gene Bank (http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org) and New Delhi’s National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) gene bank. This astounding range of genetic diversity of the Indian rice owes its origin to frequent and stochastic events of hybridisation between wild relatives and selective breeding of chosen characteristics of the pristine rice populations. Following domestication of rice, self-pollination increased to release homozygotes, with certain homozygous genotypes producing favourable combinations of recessive genes to form different varieties (Oka 1994). Domestication of wild rice landraces is still going on in different parts of the world (Vaughan and Sitch 1991). While the wild relatives of rice are known to contain valuable traits for use in plant breeding, we confine our discussion here to the description of cultivated landraces (or folk varieties) of Oryza sativa var. indica. Landraces of Indian rice can be distinguished on the basis of a diverse

3

morphological characteristics, like crop height, basal leaf sheath colour, leaf length and width, flag leaf angle, grain size, brown rice size, presence/absence of awn, grain colour, seed coat colour, awn colour, seed weight, panicle size, structure and density, threshability, presence/absence of aroma, and so on. After centuries of selective breeding, farmers are still growing numerous rice varieties with a wide range of characteristics like aroma, tolerance to drought, flood or salinity and resistance to pests and diseases. All these key agronomic characteristics have been examined and documented in this study. The rice floral biology is important in maintaining varietal purity. Typically short style and stigma, short anthers, limited pollen availability, rapid decline of pollen viability, and a brief period (between 30 seconds and nine minutes) between opening of florets and release of pollen (OGTR 2004) physically reduce crosspollination frequencies. Furthermore, rice flowers often remain open for periods of less than three hours, and only in day time (Moldenhauber and Gibbons 2003), which further delimits the scope of out-crossing. Finally, rice pollen is typically short-lived, and cannot remain viable beyond 30 minutes after release from the anther (Song et al. 2001). Although the cultivated rice (O. sativa) is predominantly self-pollinated, windassisted pollen dispersal distances have been measured up to 110m (Song et al. 2004). Despite a very low (< 1%) frequency of out-crossing, the cultivated Indian rice continues to hybridize in nature with wild rices (chiefly O. nivara and O. rufipogon). The hybrids backcross both ways and produce morphological intergrades, known as ‘red rice’ (O. sativa f. spontanea). Traditional rice farmers used to devote considerable attention to the development, maintenance and selection of desirable characteristics of cultivated rice. Traditional farmers also strove to maintain the genetic purity of preferred landraces by several selection techniques. The first stage of farmer’s selection is the selection of proper seeds before sowing. Different grain types are separated and the seed-grains of desired characteristics are then soaked in pure water or a brine solution to test the seeds: empty kernels that float are skimmed off (Bray 1986). Transplanting period is the second stage of farmer’s selection, which involves removal of the sickly or mutant plants (for example, a different colour of the sapling’s first internode). A third stage of farmer selection consists in “roguing” of off-types of rice at the flowering period. Roguing is the removal of off-type rice plants from both parents (male and female). Off-types can be identified by their morphological characters (like plant stature, leaf length and width, flag leaf angle, panicle shape, and panicle size) in the late vegetative/early flowering period. A fourth stage of selection involves picking out the panicles showing the most desirable characteristics (grain colour,

4

size, aroma, or ripening time) at harvest time, and set them aside for seed-grain (Bray 1986). Traditional farmers also selected rice landraces on the basis of respective flowering dates and duration, in order to avoid cross-pollination. With the advent of the Green Revolution, modern farmers tend to depend on the market for certified seed supply, and this dependence has resulted in the erosion of traditional practices of maintaining physical and genetic purity of rice cultivars. Most modern farmers have forgotten the traditional practice of rouging, and tend to ignore the significance of flowering times. As noted earlier, the cultivated rice has evolved into a spectacular diversity of landraces that are adapted to a whole range of tropical climatic and soil conditions (Oka 1988; OGTR 2004) and selected for specific local socio-cultural needs. Thus, the ecology of rice overlaps with the human ecology of food and farming. Several morphological characteristics of the local landraces were selected as appropriate for the local farm ecological context, which is often missed in modern ex situ agronomic research. For example, awnlessness is generally assumed to be a preferred trait in rice breeding, but peasant farmers in western districts of West Bengal bordering Jharkhand show preference for cultivars with long and strong awns, because cattle and goats tend to avoid grazing on them (Deb 2000b). Tribal farmers of southwest Bengal grow some low-yield landraces for their unique medicinal properties (ibid.). Local food cultures have also contributed to selecting certain rice varieties for their aroma and taste. Modernisation of agriculture is progressively eroding both rice genetic diversity and the associated indigenous knowledge of maintaining and using this diversity. This context marks the need of devising strategies to conserve rice genetic diversity.

5

Setting the Context: The Erosion of Folk Crop Genetic Diversity The impact of modernisation and industrialisation of agriculture on different folk crop varieties has over the past two decades raised concern among agronomists and ecologists. Conservation specialists have acknowledged the key role of folk crop varieties or landraces in sustainable agriculture, and called for conservation of the genetic diversity of these crops (Keystone Centre 1991; NRC 1992; Cleveland et al. 1994). The 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil took special note of the rapid disappearance of a multitude of folk crop varieties. The Agenda 21 called for establishing in situ conservation of crop genetic resources in farmers’ fields, and local ex situ conservation in farm communities, for the development of sustainable agriculture (UNCED 1993). The principal cause of the decimation of folk crop genetic diversity in India is the Green Revolution, through a steady replacement of folk crop varieties with modern high-input responsive varieties, mistakenly termed “high yielding varieties” (HYVs) of rice and wheat (Fowler and Mooney 1991; Shiva 1991; 2004). Folk crop varieties continue to disappear with the on-going transformation of indigenous cultures and their ecosystems (Holden et al. 1993; Deb 2004). Since replacement of folk varieties by modern HYV crops is perceived by most national governments as a criterion of ‘development’ (Srivastava and Jaffe 1993), marketing and promotion of HYV continues in most developing countries, even in places that are still rich in folk varieties. Since the ideological hegemony of Western-style development has shaped the economic aspirations of all developing and under-developed countries, promotion of HYV crops at the cost of folk crop genetic diversity is carried out not only by national governments and international development agencies, but also most NGOs in the developing countries (Cromwell et al. 1993). Erosion of crop genetic diversity has assumed awesome proportions in the case of rice in the Indian subcontinent. Despite evidences of ecological disturbances and social inequity spawned by the ‘Green Revolution’ (Fowler and Mooney 1990; Shiva 1991; 1995; Durning 1993; Matson et al. 1997; Deb 2004), replacement of folk rice varieties with “miracle seeds” remains unabated. The craze for “development” in the media has never pointed out that the HYVs are in fact not high yielding if productivity is measured as yield per unit of water input (ton/ k lit), and that folk cultivars are more cost-effective and ecologically sustainable than most HYVs (Shiva 1991; Evans 1993; Deb 1995, 2000a).

6

Folk farmers of India have maintained this genetic diversity of rice for centuries, until drawn into the mainstream of intensive industrial agriculture. Indigenous marginal (unirrigated) farm lands appear to be the last repositories of the folk rice landraces, chiefly because poor peasant farmers cannot afford the costly chemical ‘inputs’ (Deb 2000a and b). In the absence of documentation and awareness of the ecological, agronomic and cultural importance of the folk crop varieties in sustainable agriculture, younger generations of farmers as well as policy makers tend to accept the baneful consequences of HYV cultivation as an inevitable price for economic prosperity. Thus, the significance of folk crop varieties is often ignored in the discourse of agricultural development. As a result, mainstream agricultural institutions hardly allocate any funding for research in indigenous crop varieties. Incorporating folk rice varieties and folk cultural values into development of locally-based and locally-controlled farming systems is the best means to providing “acceptable livelihoods of the poor” (Cleveland et al. 1994), which is the primary objective of sustainable agriculture. Conservation and documentation of the folk varieties are thus essential for a providing the basis of sustainable economic option for poor and marginal farmers.

7

Concerns for Rice Genetic Diversity Conservation

W

hile it is generally accepted that the major cause of the loss of rice genetic diversity is modernisation and internationalisation of agriculture involving HYV seeds and the economics of extraneous nputs, the prophylaxis to prevent further loss varies widely among conservationists. Experts are divided on the issue along three major concerns as follows. The agronomic concern: Modern crop breeding techniques, including genetic engineering, requires the genetic base provided by farmers’ landraces. Modern plant breeders would require a supply of genetic raw material from the large number of landraces with certain important properties including resistance to disease organisms. Genes for withstanding drought, flood and salinity, and for resistance to a number of pests and pathogens are all available in different folk varieties. These genes can be incorporated into the genetic background of modern varieties (Holden et al. 1993; Conway 1997). Conservation of the folk varieties is therefore desirable to make the genetic diversity available to modern agriculture. Ex situ conservation in gene banks is one of the means to maintaining genetic diversity (Lipton and Longhurst 1989). In situ conservation in farmers’ fields may complement to ex situ conservation (Vaughan and Chang 1992; Holden et al. 1993). However, since local farmers are unlikely to get access to the rice seed samples from ex situ gene banks, in situ conservation, supported by local ex situ seed banks, seems to be the best option. The eco-political concern: Conservationists of the poor countries are concerned with the growing social inequity produced and maintained by the introduction of modern agriculture. The Green Revolution package in developing countries has not only replaced the indigenous crop varieties, but has benefited only the rich farmers, because the cost of the “inputs” - fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation - is beyond the reach of the poor and marginal farmers (Shiva 1991). Application of fertilizers and pesticides are essential for HYV cultivation, and all the agrochemicals are manufactured and sold by multinational corporations (MNCs). Government policy to give subsidies to chemical fertilizers to promote the industrialized agriculture constitutes a perverse incentive, aimed at enhancing unsustainable land use practices. An additional threat to the agro-biodiversity and the food security of the South has emerged from corporate business promoting genetic engineering of crops, often

8

dubbed the “second Green Revolution”. Genetically engineered crops are largely the product of private commercial research in industrial countries. The leading biotechnology firms, based in Europe and USA, control over 95% of gene transfer patents, whose focus has been on the rich farmers and consumers. Thus, herbicide-resistant crops are designed only to promote sale of the company’s brand of herbicide (Corner House 1998; UNDP 1999). In the TRIPs regime, “tighter control of innovation in the hands of multinational corporations ignores the needs of millions” (UNDP 1999: p. 68), ignores the role of cultural diversity in creating and sharing innovations, and fosters the appropriation of centuries of traditional knowledge by the West (Shiva 1995, 1997). Biopiracy of local crop genetic diversity, combined with corporate control of crop seeds market would destroy the crop diversity and eventually the food security of the South (Shiva 2000). MNCs holding such biopiracy patents (e.g. W.R. Grace’s patents on neem) seek to establish exclusive marketing rights even in the country of origin of the genetic material. Apart from corporate control over food production and marketing, serious environmental and health hazards are anticipated by experts from release of genetically modified (GM) crops - some easily perceived, others yet to become apparent (Conway 1997). Transgenic herbicide-tolerant (HT) crops may lead to the evolution of super-weeds, and wild relatives of the cultivated rice are likely to become such super-weeds (Mikkelson et al. 1996; Ellstrand et al. 1999). Such GMHT crops may lead to an excessive use of herbicides, causing decimation of biodiversity, including birds (Watkinson et al. 2000). One of the most obvious hazards involves transfer of genes from a transgenic organism to another organism (Rissler and Melon 1996; Conway 2000). Even in predominantly self-pollinated crops like rice, horizontal transmission of transgenes are known to take place in the field (Wheeler et al. 2001), which raises concerns for biosafety (Song et al. 2001). The possibility of horizontal transmission of deleterious genes through viruses and bacteria (Saxena et al. 1999; Wallimann 2000) may affect many species, including humans (Ho 1998). Transgenic crops designed to produce toxins can kill off beneficial organisms (Hilbeck et al. 1998; Losey et al. 1999; Hansen and Obrycki 2000), and elicit development of pesticide-resistance in target species (Huang et al. 1999). Also, crops engineered to establish corporate monopoly over crops by means of controlled expression of “Terminator” genes, such as the RIP gene (for ribosome inhibitor protein), are likely to sterilize seeds of crops grown in adjacent farms by cross-pollination (Crouch 1998). Thus, genetically engineered designer crops would pose a new threat to indigenous crop genetic diversity. The human ecological concern: There is evidence that farmers often maintain

9

folk varieties even when modern varieties are available (Deb 1995, 2000b). The folk varieties may seem valuable for various agronomic, social and cultural reasons. The value of the folk varieties for sustainable agriculture is not only in the genetic characteristics of the varieties, but also in the folk knowledge about (i) selecting, (ii) breeding, (iii) growing, (iv) preserving the seeds and (v) using of the crops (Cleveland et al. 1994; Deb 1996). Furthermore, the folk varieties may embody certain cultural values, which may serve to conserve the genetic diversity of the crop (Deb 1995; 2000b). There is a serious lack of research in this aspect of the folk varieties (Cromwell et al. 1993; Hodgkin et al. 1993; Cleveland et al. 1994; Deb 2000a).

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Documentation of Folk Rice Varieties of Eastern India

T

he first account of folk rice varieties of the Bengal Province was given by Hunter (1876-1881), who recorded the different rice varieties grown in different seasons and different types of land and climatic conditions. His record of about 1,100 landraces is, however, an underestimation, as indicated by later government records. After the Partition in 1947, the folk rice genetic diversity of the Indian side of Bengal was considerably reduced by the genetic isolation of the local varieties across the international border. Nevertheless, the State Rice Research Station, Chuchura had recorded in the 1970s about 5556 rice varieties (NBPGR, personal communication), of which about 3500 varieties were sent to International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) of the Philippines during the period from 1975 to 1983 (Guevarra 2000, in litt.). Likewise, 5000 accessions of rice landraces from Assam were shipped in the 1960s to IRRI, which are no longer grown in Assam and adjoining States. This collection included landraces from remote areas of eastern India, providing valuable genes for resistance to some serious pests and pathogens (Jackson 1994). The singular reason for the vanishing of thousands of local rice varieties is their steady replacement with the so-called “high-yielding varieties” (HYVs), introduced in the 1960s. Farmers were impressed by the initial high yield of the “miracle” seeds of the Green Revolution, and ignored the associated cost of external inputs, subsequent loss of non-grain biomass, and the long-term deterioration of the environment, including soil. The success of HYVs in wet farms have often prompted State agricultural scientists and agricultural extension workers to spread a set of unscientific exaggeration of yield compared to indigenous varieties. For example, the high yield of IR-8 in irrigated farms of Bardhaman district was posed as a triumph of HYVs over the ‘low-yield’ indigenous varieties like Bhut moori in dryland farms in lateritic western districts. The comparatively high yield of a large number of local landraces on dryland and seasonally inundated farms have remained systematically downplayed in most agricultural development programs. Although no “miracle” seeds have yet been developed for cultivation in saline, deep-water and dry upland conditions, farmers are prompted to grow HYVs even in unsuitable regions where only a few traditional varieties could be grown. A consequence of this Green Revlution campaign is that many common rice landraces like Dharial, Dular, Marichabeti, Nona Ram-sal and Tilak kacheri, mentioned by Richharia and Govindaswamy (1990) as remarkably adapted to different soil, topographic and climatic

11

conditions in the State, are now extinct from farms of eastern India. Among the several adverse environmental consequences of the Green Revolution (Shiva 1991; Conway 1997; Deb 2004), the drastic erosion of the genetic diversity of rice and other crops is perhaps the most serious and irreversible. Thousands of folk rice varieties are no longer found on indigenous farms, where they evolved over centuries. Many of these folk varieties, not accessed in the national and international gene banks, are now extinct for good. This critical emaciation of the genetic base of crop biodiversity translates into a threat to the country’s food security. A WWF-India survey, conducted in 1994 in six districts of southern West Bengal, recorded 137 varieties still surviving in marginal farms (Deb 1995). Later, our study of the cultural dynamics and economics of folk rice variety cultivation recorded a larger number of folk rice varieties (Deb 2000a). An investigation into the reasons for the continuation of their cultivation highlighted the following factors. The poor and marginal farmers, most of them indigenous tribals, who grow them are too impoverished to buy the costly inputs for growing HYVs. The HYVs failed to grow in dry uplands and wet lowlands, where only a few specially- adapted local varieties could grow. Certain folk varieties had distinct culture-religious values, and were used during certain special religious or social ceremonies. Many folk varieties were grown for their special aroma and flavour, which are distinctly lacking in HYVs. A small number of folk varieties fetch higher price on market than HYVs. The dwarf and poor quality straw of the HYV paddy is unsuitable for thatching huts, and cannot compare with the folk variety paddy straw. Thus, in Bankura, Birbhum, Medinipur and Puruliya districts, the latter is three times as costly as the former. As the study indicates, a minority of farmers realized the diminishing yield potential of HYVs, and noticed the unsuitability of HYVs in a range of land and soil types. Experience of repeated crop failure due to climatic vagaries and unprecedented pest and disease incidences compelled many farmers to look for plausible alternatives. Many recall that the traditional rice varieties were better performers in the local climatic and soil conditions, but ironically, the traditional crop seeds developed by their ancestors are no longer available. They find themselves at the mercy of the market supply of a handful of HYV seeds that must

12

be grown with the costly ‘inputs’ of agrochemicals, whose market is largely controlled by corporate oligarchy. The establishment of the market economy has insidiously obliterated the traditional practice of informal seed exchange among farmers. This has resulted in an abysmal scarcity of the folk variety seeds. Since folk rice variety seeds are not sold on market, the choice of the farmer is restricted to a handful of HYVs for cultivation. With the recent introduction of genetically engineered (GE) crop seeds, patented and marketed by Northern multinational corporations, farmers’ options and capabilities are likely to become further restricted in terms of crop variety selection and farm management decisions. New laws like Plant Varieties Protection Act (2004), the Patent Ordinance (2004), and the Seed Bill (2004) have been drafted to secure the vested interests of transnational seed companies by abolishing farmers’ rights to save, cultivate and exchange their seeds and the farmer’s autonomy altogether. Vrihi’s seed exchange network is opposing this process of shrinkage of the farmer’s option, and has considerably increased the availability of folk rice variety seeds. Over the past seven years, more than four hundred farmers have received folk rice varieties from Vrihi. In view of the patent on Basmati lines and grains (US Patent #5663484), registered in 1997 by RiceTec Inc., any folk rice variety seems to be vulnerable to biopiracy patent with reference to a set of agronomic and morphological characteristics. One of the legal means to preempting the biopiracy patent claims is to document the traditional folk knowledge of specific characteristics and uses of extant rice varieties. Since 1998, Vrihi has been keeping a register of folk rice varieties and their agronomic and morphological characteristics. As of January 2005, detailed morphological characterisation of 416 varieties has been completed, and assessment of other varieties is in process. The agronomic features of all the rice varieties of Vrihi’s accession, and detailed morphological characteristics of 416 varieties are presented here.

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Materials and Methods

F

olk varieties of rice were screened from 15 districts of West Bengal, 3 districts of Jharkhand, two districts of Orissa, and one each from Assam and Tripura. Indigenous farmers have donated valuable seeds of rare folk rice varieties to Vrihi for promoting in situ conservation. UBINIG of Bangadesh also donated seeds of a dozen traditional Bengal rice varieties that are no longer grown in West Bengal. Vrihi’s collection of folk rice varieties was further enriched by donation of 8 special varieties from farmers of Malgudi district, Maharashtra. These varieties have been conserved by farm-saving, and every year the seeds are distributed among farmers from the seed exchange centre of Vrihi, situated at Beliatore, West Bengal. The names and addresses of all farmer-members of the Vrihi seed exchange network are appended at the end of the book. The names of farmers who have donated their farm-saved seeds to Vrihi are given in Appendix 1, which also gives a list of the rice landraces they contributed. The farmers listed in Appendix 2 are the ones who have received indigenous rice variety seeds from Vrihi. Seed Conservation All the folk rice variety accessions were dried in the sun for 3 to 4 hours in the winter, and were mixed thoroughly with neem (Azadirachta indica) oil. The proportion of the oil to the rice grains was prescribed by farmers. The oil proves to be an effective anti-fungal and pest-repellent agent. Furthermore, the thin film of neem oil appears to prevent the seeds from absorbing moisture from the air. The dried seeds are kept in paper envelopes, which are stored in earthen pitchers bearing identification tags. Inside the sealed pitchers, the seeds remain viable because they can breathe, and are protected from storage pests. This technique of seed preservation has proven effective to keep the seeds viable for 3 years. As of date, samples of 416 folk rice varieties are in Vrihi’s repository. All these varieties have been repeatedly grown on small farm plots in the districts of Bankura and Puruliya for five years. Farmers from Bankura and Puruliya districts allotted plots of their farms for experimental cultivation of different rice seeds from Vrihi’s collection. In 1998, 42 rice varieties were grown on a farm in Puruliya district. Of these, 10 varieties (Lathi-sal, Asanleya, Mala, Bishmoni, Bansh kathi, Bhim-sal, Ashwin jharia, Bhasa manik, Darka-sal, Mohipal) were repeated in 1999, to check if the agromorphological traits remain stable. In 1999, 32 varieties were grown in Bankura

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district, and 17 in Puruliya district. A few special varieties, namely Chakramala, Lal badshabhog and Jugal, were grown on both Bankura and Puruliya farms, in order to check if different edapho-climatic conditions would alter its agronomic and morphological characteristics. From the year 2000 to 2004, 410 varieties were grown on Vrihi’s experimental farm in Bankura. Agronomic and morphological characterisation We produce here a range of important agronomic and morphological characteristics of 416 folk varieties from Vrihi’s accession. The following agronomic characteristics and folk cultural uses of the rice varieties, grown in the absence of any input of synthetic agrochemicals are documented here: District of origin Type of land where grown Number of days until flowering Date of 50% flowering Flowering duration Crop duration (from sowing to harvesting) Special agronomic features (resistance to pests and pathogens, aroma, grain quality, etc.) End use (grown especially for daily or ritual cooking, for making rice bubbles, puffed rice, etc. In addition to these agronomic and cultural features, morphological characteristics were also ascertained for all these rice varieties. A total of 416 folk rice varieties were grown over the period from 1998 to 2004 on different farm plots in Bankura and Puruliya districts for agro-ecological experiments. Measurements of different morphological characteristics of these 416 landraces at different stages of growth were recorded, following IRRI (1980) and INGER (1996) guidelines. The characteristics documented in this study are as follows:

Total plant: seedling height, plant height, tillering ability; Culm: culm number, strength, internode colour; Leaf: leaf length and width, leaf angle, leaf senescence, flag leaf angle and colour, basal leaf sheath colour; Panicle: panicle type, length, weight, secondary branching pattern, threshability, number of grains, proportion of sterile grains, panicle axis; Grain: grain length, grain width, lemma and palea colour, lemma and palea pubescence, apiculus colour, 100-grain weight, brown rice length, brown rice

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width, brown rice colour, awn length, awn colour, pubescence, fragrance, , awning incidence, awn colour, awn length. Yield potential (Y) of each landrace was estimated as the mean grain weight per ha, and calculated from the formula: Yield (t /ha) = (H) (PAN) (PDEN – ST) (cSW) / (10A) where cSW is dry weight of hundred seeds (in grams), PDEN is mean panicle density or the total number of spikelets per panicle, ST is the mean number of unfilled (sterile) grains per panicle, H is the standard sampled number of hills grown on a unit plot area A (in cm2), and PAN is the modal number of effective tillers (i.e. with panicles) obtained from each hill. Physiological characteristics like flowering duration and resistance to pests and pathogens, and 33 morphological characteristics of each landrace were assessed from a sample of 64 tillers selected from the core (the innermost 8 rows x 8 columns) of the study plots. The rice plants were grown on small plots with a uniform spacing of not exceeding 20 cm. In order to preclude chances of crosspollination, the farm plantation was designed on the basis of asynchronous flowering of adjacent cultivars. Based on mismatching dates of flowering and flowering durations, a temporal gap of at least 12 hours between the onset of flowering of each variety and the milk stage of its neighbor was maintained. Disease- and pest-resistance: Resistance of rice plants to pests and pathogens was assessed by direct observation of the incidence of pest insects and diseases over five years. We compared pest abundances and the degree of bacterial and fungal infections (INGER 1996) between neighbouring varieties. Repetition of the observation for a large number of varieties over five years and in two districts indicated the stability of such characteristics. Resistance to a particular pest or pathogen was surmised only when a cultivar showed zero incidence of that pest or pathogen, while the other cultivars grown on neighbouring plots contracted it. The resistance was inferred to be characteristic of a given cultivar on the basis of repeated observation of zero incidence of the same pest/pathogen over two seasons and across two districts.

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Salient Findings

A

ll the folk rice varieties were developed by innovative farmer experiments on the substratum of available genetic diversity of rice (Watabe 1972; Oka 1988; Chang 2003). Indigenous farmers are capable of developing new crop varieties from wild landraces through farmer experiments with breeding and selection over generations. Indeed, farmer experiments continue to breed new rice varieties. Three such new stable varieties accessed by Vrihi are Anamika, Asit kalma and Panchali. Anamika was developed by a farmer from Birnagar of Nadia district; Asit kalma, by a farmer named Asit Dey from Kalyanpur of Bankura district; and Panchali, by a farmer from Panchal village of Bankura district. It seems plausible that such varietal names as Dulal-sal and Subal-sal signify to commemorate the likely names of farmers who developed these varieties. All the folk rice landraces in Vrihi’s accession, 416 in total, were assessed for general agronomic traits (including modes of cultural uses). Table 1 describes the geographic locations of origin, land type, sowing time, date of 50% flowering, days until flowering, flowering duration, and maturation period of these landraces. In addition, we record in this table the special agronomic features such as pestand disease-resistance and the ability to withstand adverse environmental conditions like drought or flood. Varieties that are not transplanted are indicated in this column as “sown”. While different varieties of rice are grown in Aush (autumn crop), Aman (winter crop) and Boro (summer crop) seasons, the majority of folk rice cultigens are Aman variety, and not indicated in the table. The last column of the table records the different uses of these landraces, from which their cultural/ medicinal/ religious values may be surmised. Table 2 summarizes the assessment of a range of detailed agro-morphological characteristics of 416 folk rice landraces from 10 districts of West Bengal, a district of Maharashtra, two districts of Orissa, a district of Assam, two districts of Jharkhand and also a district of Bangladesh. Characteristics of importance to local food cultures are not separately mentioned in this table, but can easily be surmised from the morphological characteristics (e.g. rice grain length, bran colour, fragrance etc.) and from the “End Use” and the “Special Agronomic Traits” columns of Table 1. Different folk rice varieties are adapted to different local edaphic and climatic conditions. Farmer landraces have remarkable adaptations to local climatic environmental conditions. The range of adaptations is unlikely to be found in modern varieties. A considerably large number of farmer-selected landraces also

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