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Farmers wisdom must be on paper in era of patents

  • 14/04/2009

Farmers wisdom must be on paper in era of patents At a time when fast food reigns, one hardly thinks of cherishing a local Indian delicacy and conserving a local plant variety. M P Nayar, former director of the Botanical Survey of India who currently heads the government Task Force on Agro-biodiversity Hotspots recently completed mapping these hotspots. P R J Pradeep talks to him

On the difference between agro-biodiversity hotspots and biodiversity hotspots:

Biodiversity hotspots are about endemic plant or animal species whose habitats are fragile or threatened with destruction. Here, the wild is in focus.

A similar diversity of crops is also found in human habitats. A large number of crop species and their variants constitute our food basket. Humankind becomes poorer with the loss of each crop variety. The term agro-biodiversity as described in the Plants Variety and the Farmers