Gurung Rita

Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) | LI-BIRD · Biodiversity and ecosystem services for sustainable livelihoods

A. Introduction In Nepal, more than 80% of seed requirement is met by the informal seed system, i.e., using own farm-saved seeds and exchanges between farmers. Landraces forms major part of the informal seed systems. In the case of traditional mountain crops such as proso millet and foxtail millet, the share of landraces is 100% (Palikhey et al 201...

A. Introduction Agricultural diversity is at risk of loss, even though all genetic resources could not be collected for long-term conservation within a short period. Therefore, red zoning and red listing are very useful for prioritizing conservation and utilization efforts as well as for initiating in-situ, on-farm, and ex-situ conservation appropr...

A. Introduction Nepalese farmers of mountain and hill agroecosystem mostly grow landraces or traditional varieties of most of the crops. In some major crops like rice, wheat, and maize, very old varieties are in cultivation. Insufficient research on minor crops and poor extension networks to disseminate new varieties of major crops are the major re...

Seed is a key input in agriculture system. Availability of preferred quality seeds at right time to farming community is important in maintaining productivity and ensuring food security of the people. The seed system must function properly for fulfilling required and preferred variety seeds at right time to farmers in affordable price. Periodic ana...

Traditional crops cultivated and consumed over generations are important components of agrobiodiversity that support dietary diversity, sustaining productivity and livelihoods of marginalized populations in Nepal. The paper outlines initiatives and progress made for value chain development and mainstreaming traditional nutrient-dense crops for nutr...

Traditional crops cultivated and consumed over generations are important components of agrobiodiversity that support dietary diversity, sustaining productivity and livelihoods of marginalized populations in Nepal. The paper outlines initiatives and progress made for value chain development and mainstreaming traditional nutrient-dense crops for nutr...

Trend analysis of climatic parameters suggests that Nepal is more vulnerable to climate change; thus, a changing climate might have impact on plant disease occurrence and severity. This work aims to analyze the climate change pattern and its effect on occurrence and severity of disease of traditional crops and future scenario at the study sites. Th...

Conservation along with sustainable production of crops using crop diversity has been a priority work of relevant stakeholders in mountain agriculture. With respecting and improving tradition of mixing native landraces, replicated trials were conducted on different mixtures of improved varieties and landraces and sole cultivars of rice, buckwheat,...

Bean mixture is very old tradition in mountain agriculture. Knowledge on status, reasons and advantages of mixing bean landraces help to improve the mixture practice and extend this method to other crops. We conducted 4 focus group discussions (2 males and 2 females separately) with farming communities of the selected two representative villages in...

Various community based agro-biodiversity management methods, tools and approaches have been developed to promote on-farm conservation and use of Plant Genetic Resources (PGRs) • Different good practices has been developed for on farm management of agricultural biodiversity which needs to be systematically packaged for easy community level practice...

The concept of Diversity Field DFS is defined as a community centered learning and action platform where farmers participate to understand the value of biodiversity and manage agricultural plant genetic resources (APGR) by practicing various diversity management approaches, methods, tools and sustain successful initiatives through collective action...

Diversity Fair (DF) is a well-established multi-purpose participatory tool designed for sensitizing community and diverse stakeholders on the importance and value of local genetic resources. Sometimes DF is known as seed fair if community only focuses to exhibit crop seeds and planting materials. DF is recognized as an effective tool for promoting...

Participatory Seed Exchange (PSE) is a low cost, simple and effective community-based mechanism for improving farmers' access to locally adapted seeds and planting materials which promotes farmer led on-farm conservation and utilization of the agrobiodiversity by exchanging available Agricultural Plant Genetic Resource (APGR) within the community....

Red zoning techniques for identifying endangered list of crop species and landraces along with red listing methods for different crop genotypes. Red zoning and red listing for agrobiodiversity

Various participatory methods for deploying and sourcing new crop diversity have been practiced during the UNEP/GEF funded Local Crops Project. More than 300 landraces and new varieties of eight local crops: amaranth, naked barley, common bean, buckwheat, finger millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, and cold-tolerant rice were deployed in four dist...

Monogenotyping the farming land is also major factor of genetic erosion. Cultivars (that consists of landraces as well as varieties) mixture is a simple and sustainable genetic resources management system to increase yield, provide yield stability, to conserve genes, to manage diseases (buffer against disease loss) and to restrict the spread of dis...

Agricultural diversity is at risk of loss, even though all genetic resources could not be collected for long term conservation within a short period of time. Therefore, red zoning and red listing are very useful for prioritizing conservation and utilization efforts as well as for initiating in-situ, on-farm and ex-situ conservation appropriately. R...

Different natural calamities also make native landraces endangered. Such landraces are lost if further conservation action did not take place. Exploration and collection of such endangered landraces is called germplasm rescue. National gene bank started rescue since 2014 for buckwheat diversity in Dolpa district. Collection of native germplasm was...

Drawing upon consequentially growing food insecurity in mid-hills attributed to poor adoption levels inter alia inflicted by narrow range of locally adaptive farmer’s preferred cold tolerant rice varietal options in national agricultural system, the present study was undertaken. We conducted on farm diversity assessment of 60 high altitude rice gen...

This catalogue is a result of combined efforts of the people engaged actively and continuously in a UNEP/GEF funded project “Integrating traditional crop genetic diversity into technology: using a biodiversity portfolio approach to buffer against unpredictable environmental change in the Nepal Himalayas” being implemented in four districts Dolakha,...

Smallholder farmers in mountain regions of Nepal depend on traditional nutrient rich underutilized crops, including barley, buckwheat, beans, amaranths, finger millet, proso millet, and foxtail millet for their local food and nutrition security. These crops are currently undervalued nationally and globally and hence neglected by the research and de...

Naked barley (Hordeum vulgare var. nudum L.) is an important food crop in mountain regions of Nepal, however, its production area and genetic diversity is known to be shrinking fast. One of the reasons could be the poor productivity. To improve the productivity of crops, it is essential that new site-specific, high-yielding and widely adopted varie...

Community seed bank (CSB) is one of the approaches successfully applied in Nepal and globally for conservation and use of local crop diversity for food and agriculture. However, there are a few success examples of CSBs in high mountain areas of Nepal particularly focusing on traditional underutilized crops. This paper aims to present modality and e...

Amaranth for leafy vegetable registered in Nepal.

Background Naked barley is a traditional, climate-resilient and highly nutritious crop of the high mountains of Nepal. Knowledge of agro-morphological diversity among the naked barely genotypes is fundamental for their efficient utilization in plant breeding schemes and effective conservation programs. The primary objective of this study is phenoty...

Foxtail millet [Setaria italica (L.) P. Beauv.] is among the oldest cereal grains grown from time immemorial in the Himalayan regions of Nepal. However, Nepalese farmers do not have any improved variety officially released due to lack of substantial research in this crop. A total of 41 foxtail millet accessions were characterized using phenotypic o...

Community seed bank (CSB) is one of the approaches successfully applied in Nepal and globally for conservation and use of local crop diversity for food and agriculture. However, there are only a few success examples of CSBs in high mountain areas of Nepal, particularly focusing on traditional underutilized crops. This chapter aims to present the mo...