On-farm Conservation of Rainfed Rice Landrace Diversity in Chhattisgarh, India

India is considered as one of the centers of origin and diversity for Asian rice, where a large number of landraces are still under cultivation. Though, there has been continuous loss of genetic diversity but concerns have been addressed with increased pace in recent years. Keeping this in mind, the present study was aimed to collect, conserve (ex-situ) and identify the determinants of on-farm landrace diversity in the rainfed ecosystem of Chhattisgarh. The landrace diversity of rainfed rice and knowledge about their socio-economic and cultural importance among the local farming communities of six districts of Chhattisgarh was documented during this study. The farmers are presently maintaining various drought tolerant rice landraces on on-farm (in-situ) through rainfed cropping system. Hence, considering the significance of genetic resources of rice particularly for drought tolerance under changing climate locally adapted cultivars of rice growing in rainfed conditions were collected during kharif 2015. Based on the morphological and quantitative characters as observed in farmer's field, 48 diverse samples of rice landraces were assembled along with associated indigenous traditional knowledge. Based on quantitative characters, landraces were grouped into two major clusters each of which further grouped into two sub-clusters keeping in view the similarity in traits. Besides agro-morphological characters, various observations pertaining to agro-ecological habitats, traditional processing methods, socio-economic and cultural development, diversity available, factors responsible for erosion/replacement of diversity, visual values and specialized food quality etc. have been discussed.