22nd of May every year is celebrated as International Day for Biodiversity or world biodiversity day. The purpose of celebrating this day is to raise awareness about the importance of biodiversity, promote its conservation and also to discuss challenges and possible solutions for conservation. This year’s theme is “Be part of the Plan” and the goal is to halt and reverse the loss of biodiversity by supporting the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Broadly it aims at living in harmony with nature and focusing on reducing threats to biodiversity, promoting conservation, and enhancing sustainable use of natural resources. This article is also an effort to contribute to the campaign in terms of raising awareness about our own bio-diversity, highlighting its importance and also giving an idea about how it is influenced by our activities.
According to UN, biological diversity resources are the pillars upon which we build civilizations. But the matter of fact is that we are losing bio-diversity at a great pace. As per UNESCO, biodiversity is lost at up to1000 time the natural rate and these extinctions are irreversible and pose a serious threat to our health and well-being. The significance of biodiversity in sustainable agriculture cannot be overemphasized in view of the fact that the adoption of high yielding varieties has narrowed down the vast genetic resources available in the world as well as in India. It is good to breed new genotypes with high yields and resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses, but it is also equally important to conserve the plant and animal resources.
India for instance has lost around 1.10 lakh varieties of indigenous rice after green revolution.These land races passed from generation to generation almost over the last 12000 years. These vast genetic resources in rice and other crops have enabled scientists to develop novel region and location specific varieties with desired traits. High adaptability and some special traits make local land races very important for breeders. According to a report from Inter-governmental Science policy Platform on biodiversity and ecosystem (IPBES), the rate at which species are disappearing is faster than ever. Report says that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within a decade, which is more than ever before in the human history.
The average abundance of native species in major land based habitats has fallen by at least 20%, mostly since 1900. According to Sir Robert Watson, the health of ecosystem on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. He further says “we are eroding the very foundation of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide. The situation can be improved and it is not too late to make a difference, but only if we start now at every level from local to global through transformative change. So conservation of indigenous crop varieties especially that at the verge of extinction is really very important.
World is now realizing the importance of conserving biodiversity and efforts have been intensified over the past few years to check the genetic erosion and to conserve the precious germplasm. Rice as most of us know is staple food for the people of Jammu & Kashmir. In the Kashmir valley more than 100 local land races of paddy suited to different agro-ecological situations are reported and most of these are fortunately conserved at Mountain Research Center for Field Crops, MRCFC-SKUAST-Kashmir.These land races possess one or the other special traits and are being explored for rice breeding programme at the Center. Mushkbudgi which is a premium short and bold local land-race of rice of Kashmir valley, very famous for aroma in the UT and beyond, is a prime example of exploring potential of local biodiversity.
Recently Muskbudgi received Geographical Indication (GI) tag which will help in preventing duplication and give prominence to Mushkbudji both in national and international markets besides encouraging area expansion under similar ecologies in Kashmir Valley. For the past few years Mushkbudji farmers are not only earning good returns but also getting national recognition. By winning the prestigious ‘Plant Genome Savior Community Award’ from Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers Right Authority, a statutory body under the Ministry of Agriculture in 2016 the fame of this variety has reached corners of the country and beyond. So use of more profitable and sustainable agricultural enterprises and varieties is vital for sustainability, as it not only improves farm income but also reduces both low level and high level risks.
Scientific evidences reveal that biological barriers created by diversity of crops in an area or a region reduce the disease and pest incidence. Mono-cropping over a large area, on the other hand breaks these biological barriers and make crop prune to associated diseases and pests problems. We see a huge area expansion under apple in the Valley. Here again we must be careful in maintaining the balance by creating diversity within the different crops and also make fruit farming diverse. For that we have to give importance to other temperate fruits as well and make them competitive through research and policy initiatives.
Focusing only on few crops or varieties will again break the biological barriers and encourage the disease and pest incidence. The costs involved in managing the diseases and pests will be huge not only in terms of pesticides but also in terms of the damage it may cause to the environment, ecology and human health.
Taking above in consideration, conserving biodiversity is vital to avoid serious consequences in the future. Another challenge agriculture faces at present is the challenge of climate change. The conservation of genetic resources will be helpful for scientists in developing climate smart crop varieties which show resilience to both biotic and abiotic stresses. In nutshell it is high time to take every possible step to conserve our biodiversity and contribute to the best possible towards global mission of achieving sustainable development goals.
(Author is Chief Scientist (Agronomy), MRCFC, SKUAST-Kashmir. Feedback: [email protected])
