Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

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Submergence resistant rice on the airwaves

“It was not in use,” said Pamela Ronald. “Very, very low yield and very poor flavor, so no one was eating it. It’s really more like a grassy weed, but it had these properties.”

“It” is a rice from eastern India which was known ((By farmers, the article says. But then Dr Ronald says it was not in use. Was it information recorded by a conscientious germplasm collector?)) to survive under water. Listen on VOA to how Pamela Roland identified the sub gene in this variety and then introduced it into the popular Swarna.

“We wanted to hear what kind of difference it made to their families, and a couple of the women told me that they were able to feed their families and they had extra rice to sell, which is really important in those areas to bring in a little cash,” said Pamela Ronald.

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Rice vs millet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmHUsVlc8yY

We’ve mentioned before the efforts to support millet cultivation among the Hill Tribes of India. There’s even a BBC documentary about the work. The above video is not from the Kolli Hills, but the problem it illustrates is the same. Rice subsidies and mining are threatening the way of life of the Dongria Kondh.

Living Farms works with them to ensure availability of food for the entire year. This is being done by re-establishing their traditional farming system, by conserving the biodiversity of millet and uncultivated food.

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Disaster anthropology and agrobiodiversity

A post at antropologi.info, which covers anthropology in the news, discusses a recent master’s thesis by Uy Ngoc Bui which “looks at the role of NGOs, the state and the people themselves” in the efforts to recover from typhoon Durian after it hit Bến Tre province in Southern Vietnam on 5 December 2006. Although there’s nothing specifically on agrobiodiversity in the article, this quote from the thesis struck me as very relevant:

My experience is that more research should be done on the bridging of relief aid with long term reconstruction and development. Relief aid has become more efficient and standardised, which is positive, but this is only short term help for people who are in a vulnerable situation. Decreasing their vulnerability and strengthening their capacity to overcome disasters in the future should be the key foci of anthropologists and NGOs.

I would guess she’s mainly thinking about the sort of relief that involves the shelter and health of victims, but one could say very much the same thing about seed relief after disasters — and indeed, it has been said. “Decreasing [people’s] vulnerability and strengthening their capacity to overcome disasters in the future should be the key foci” not only of anthropologists but also of agronomists and breeders.

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