Manipur: National Indigenous Seed Festival kicks off at CAU campus

October 12: On Saturday, the National Indigenous Seed Festival commenced at the Central Agricultural University (CAU) campus in Manipur. It aims to create awareness on conserving the indigenous seed ecosystem, reviving indigenous seeds, networking with farmers, protecting traditional wisdom, ensuring agro-biodiversity and agro-ecology conservation activities. In this regard, a seminar and an exhibition are being organised. The event will witness the participation of farmers and non-governmental organizations from various states in India. It will continue till October 14.  

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'Gradual extinction of indigenous seeds'

Rajkumar Ranjan Singh, the chairperson of the organising committee stated that new variants were replacing the indigenous seeds to meet the growing demand. He contended that many indigenous seeds were on the verge of extinction. 

He said, "Modern technologies and different varieties of seeds are replacing the traditional methods and indigenous seeds to meet the ever-increasing demands. Humans prefer the high yielding varieties with the passage of time and neglect the indigenous seeds, which are one factor for the gradual extinction of indigenous seeds.” 

While the organizer of this festival is All Manipur Trained Medical and Aromatic Plants Promoters Consortium, it is receiving technical support from the Bharat Beej Swaraj Manch (India Seed Sovereignty Alliance).  

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'Farmers of the state are talented'

The Vice-Chancellor of CAU, M Premjit spoke on this occasion about the difficulties faced by the farmers in preserving traditional seeds. He reckoned that it was necessary to focus on technical as well as indigenous farming. Moreover, he highlighted the fact that the North-east region was a biological hotspot. 

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He remarked, "Manipur has abundant varieties of seeds especially rice seeds, but almost all farmers face difficulties in maintaining and preserving traditional rice seeds due to different factors. CAU has 13 diverse campuses similar to farmers having different types of seeds. Since the farmers of the State are talented and conserving traditional seeds culturally, it is time to focus both on technical farming as well as indigenous farming.” Premjit added, "Out of the different species of flora species available, 9650 rice species have already been identified, and from the 279 traditional rice have been identified from Manipur and deposited at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic." 

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(With ANI inputs)