In view of the failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity, CIS [Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies] established Vrihi (Sanskrit name of “rice”), the first non-governmental rice seed bank for farmers, in 1997. Coordinated by its founder Debal Deb, Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra is the largest non-governmental rice seed exchange centre in eastern India, established not only to promote cultivation of folk rice varieties, but also re-establish the vanishing culture of seed exchange.
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CIS gratefully acknowledges the funding support it received from RFSTE for Vrihi’s activities till March 2000. Since then, Vrihi has been running on its founder’s personal funding support and donations from friends, especially Dr. Paoloroberto Imperiali of Rome. His donation was instrumental in establishing a research farm, Basudha, where regular, in situ cultivation of all folk rice varieties began in 2001.
Very worthy, but unfortunately not all seems to be well. Vrihi Beej Binimoy Kendra moved this May, from Beliatore to Panchal. And now the farm operation has moved too, from Basudha to Kerandiguda in Odisha.
In 2010 we were able to save all the 686 varieties on Bhairab Saini’s farm, some 5 km away from Basudha. Bhairab sacrificed his farm plot for Basudha’s conservation work for the year, but we cannot take advantage of his generosity every year; besides, we must find a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties in situ… We have transferred all the rice seeds from Basudha’s accession to this new farm in Kerandiguda, and started sowing the seeds from the 16th June 2011, with the help of local villagers, and Living Farms, a local NGO. The sowing was finished on the 21st June.
Good luck to them, of course. But I can’t help thinking that “a sustainable solution to conserve the nation’s wealth of vanishing rice varieties” should include placing these 686 varieties in the genebanks at NBPGR and IRRI, pace the “failure of all ex situ rice seed banks to protect the erosion of rice genetic diversity.”And not necessarily growing all of them out every year at CIS’s farm, given some basic seed storage technology. But I don’t know enough about the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies and it’s seed saving operation. Maybe our Indian readers can tell us more.
This is not in-situ conservation, it is field conservation, exactly as with orchard collections of perennial crops that can not, or only with difficulty, be stored ex-situ. It is the usual way that botanic gardens have been maintaining plants for hundreds of years. They urgently need to get samples to NBPGR.