Varietal Threat Index for Monitoring Crop Diversity on Farms in Five Agro-Ecological Regions in India

Mohammad Ehsan Dulloo,Natalia Estrada Carmona,Rashmi Yadav,Jai C Rana,Francesca Grazioli

doi:10.3390/d13110514

Abstract

Our knowledge about the status of agrobiodiversity on farms is still very limited. While several studies to assess the crop genetic diversity on farms have been undertaken, there are no systematic documentation and monitoring practices for varietal diversity in space and time. Achievement of the agrobiodiversity Aichi Target 13, established under the Biodiversity Strategy Plan 2011–2020, have failed due to the lack of existing data on varietal diversity at country, regional and global levels. Here, we propose a method for calculating the Varietal Threat Index using the four-cell analysis (FCA) participatory methodology at different geographical scales to monitor changes in the varietal diversity on farms and to compare between areas. We tested the method with datasets collected from the UN-Environment GEF project implemented in India, in which data on crop and varietal diversity were collected across seven states in India, covering five agroecological regions. Results showed that landraces are still commonly grown in the study sites, especially in the central and western regions, and that more than 50% of landraces are considered threatened, suggesting that conservation interventions are required to prevent large-scale genetic erosion. A long-term monitoring framework for varietal diversity in India is proposed.

Highlights

Published: 22 October 2021Crop genetic resources for food and agriculture, and especially for varietal diversity on farms, are the basis for securing food and nutrition [1,2], for sustainable agriculture [3,4,5], for regulating and provisioning essential ecosystem services [6], as well as for coping with the impacts of climate change [7,8]
Diversity on farms. aWe collected varietal we present a methodology for calculating threat indexcrop for crop varidiversity from sites and five agroecological zones through the four-cell analysis (FCA)
The study has presented a snapshot of the varietal diversity across seven states and different agroecological zones in India

Summary

Introduction

Published: 22 October 2021Crop genetic resources for food and agriculture, and especially for varietal diversity on farms, are the basis for securing food and nutrition [1,2], for sustainable agriculture [3,4,5], for regulating and provisioning essential ecosystem services [6], as well as for coping with the impacts of climate change [7,8]. Varietal diversity, which is the diversity within crops, is defined as the extent of dissimilarity among a set of varieties [9] due to genetic differences. It includes both improved varieties and traditional crop varieties, called landraces or farmer, local, primitive, heirloom, heritage, and indigenous varieties [10,11]. There are ample published evidence of the extent of genetic erosion in crop varieties on farms [6,14,15,16] but many of the studies reported are ad hoc assessments of genetic erosion at specific sites. Few long-term regional studies have attempted to assess varietal diversity of specific crops.

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion