Crop diversity, seed banks and farmers' varieties

Modern farming depends on a narrow set of high-yielding varieties, which is efficient but risky. When millions of hectares grow genetically similar crops, a single pest, disease or heatwave can cause widespread loss. Traditional varieties and wild relatives of crops carry genes for drought tolerance, flood tolerance, pest resistance and taste that breeders may need in future. Losing those varieties is like burning a library before reading its books.

India protects this diversity in two ways. Ex situ conservation stores seeds in gene banks, notably at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources in New Delhi, which holds one of the world's large collections. In situ conservation keeps varieties growing in farmers' fields and in wild habitats, where they continue to adapt. Both are needed: a seed bank preserves genes, but only a living field shows how a variety performs under real pests, soils and weather.

The Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001, tries to balance breeders and farmers. It allows breeders to register new varieties and claim rights, while recognising farmers as breeders, conservers and users: farmers may save, use, sow, resow, exchange and share seed of protected varieties in the traditional way, though they may not sell branded seed of a protected variety. The Act also provides for benefit-sharing and for a National Gene Fund.

The tension is real. Strong breeder rights can encourage private research, but if they raise seed prices or restrict saving and exchange, they can hurt small farmers and narrow the varieties in use. A good system rewards innovation without making farmers dependent on a single company or a single variety. Community seed banks, run by farmers themselves, are one practical bridge between a national gene bank and a village field. They also preserve knowledge about sowing time, taste and storage that a seed packet alone cannot carry.