Preserving Landraces in Hybrid Era: Padma Shri Awardee’s Journey Explains the Importance

We are living in an age where people are actually very conscious about their food and are really worried about the constituents of their food. This has actually made the human race to research ways to actually grow food that can help feed many while also retaining the nutrients that people might want in their food.

So in an age when biofortification and hybrid crops are considered as the answer to the human races nutrient problems, it’s really rare to find people who actually might even think of protecting the existing landraces as an option for the nutrient crisis.

This is what Rahibai Popere the “Seed Mother” of Maharashtra was doing to receive recognition via a Padma Shri.

This initiative taken by The “Seedmother” is also the very idea that many Indian scientists have always talked about when asked about biofortification For example Dr Ashok Kumar the head of the ICAR in an exclusive interview with Krishi Jagran vehemently said that whats the use of boosting nutrients in certain crops when we can find their naturally occurring nutrient-rich variants in nature.

This mechanism is actually very rare to find naturally nowadays due to human crop selection which has kind of eliminated these unique variants from occurring in nature.

The only way forward is to use the help of tissue culture labs and use the genetic materials of these unique variants which are stored there to utilise them to increase the yield rates of these variants so that farmers would start cultivating them.

Padma Shri Rahibai Popere, also known as the seed mother, is a member of the BAIF-supported Kalsubai Parisar Biyane SanvardhanSamajik Sanstha in Akole. This organisation has been in the vanguard of the campaign to safeguard landraces of rice, small millets, hyacinth beans, finger millets, and native vegetables, working in the tribal block of Akole.

The Sanstha has protected 114 landraces of 40 different crops.