MS Swaminathan agro-biodiversity centre achieves success in Wayanad

The community Agrobiodiversity Centre (CAbC) under M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), that has been operating in the Wayanad district for a decade, seems to have been successful in conserving traditional varieties in crop plants of food value, and rare endemic and threatened species in wild flowering plants.The MSSRF expanded its activities under a broader programme to provide infrastructure to empower communities in agro biodiversity conservation and thereby, enhancing rural livelihoods, by establishing CABC in Wayanad 1997.The 10 years of work in conservation has provided ample baseline information on wild foods, yams and RET plant species seen in the Western ghats, Dr.N.Anil Kumar, Director of the centre in Wayanad, told Business Line.What is significant is that a large number of people have learned to manage their natural resources such as soil and water and improve their food security by managing their home-gardens and semi-wilderness habitats in a better way, he said. Over 500 women have been trained in the production and use, and marketing of primary health care products. Besides, a sizeable number of children had been educated on the importance of biodiversity and traditional knowledge.This has resulted in the emergence of core teams of educated youth, women and men farmers in villages and they engaged in spreading the message of sustainable resource management methods across their regions. The role played by the CAbC in slowing down the pace of conversion of paddy fields into banana fields and revival of homestead farming by promoting marginal foods such as yams and taros, and revitalisation of traditional health care practices is significant in the district and invited wider attention from the whole of Kerala, he said. Promotion of organic and LEISA farming methods and education in biodiversity aimed at tribal and rural children were the other areas of achievements, he said.However, there are grey areas in our targeted goals and achievements he conceded. For instance, he said reaching the men and women living in poverty with the goal of improving their livelihoods in s sustainable manner is still a challenging goal for us", Much more needs to be done to address various dimensions of livelihoods and poverty of the district, particularly the tribal communities such as Paniya, Kuttunaikka and Adiya.The households food and health security initiatives and income generation process by commercialising biodiversity products and ecosystem services without undermining their other values such as culture, production opportunities can prove to be a majopr improvement in the lives of the pooresr in CAbC's intervention sites.The strategic area of action, he said, is to implement four integrated packages under a strategic framework during 2008-2012.Among the packages, conservation gets high attention at the levels of in situ on farm conservation, ex situ consideration involving seed bank, in vitro cultures in the case of vegetatively propagated plants such as yams and the cultural landscapes like sacred groves etc.

The Business Line, 2nd April 2009