What Happened
- A grassroots network of tribal and smallholder farmers in Andhra Pradesh's Eastern Ghats is conserving hundreds of indigenous seed varieties — including native rice, millets, pulses, and vegetables — and creating formal market linkages for their produce.
- The initiative bridges seed conservation with economic empowerment: farmers who revive indigenous varieties are now selling them through local markets and seed festivals, generating income while preserving agro-biodiversity that commercial agriculture has steadily eroded.
- Organisations like Sanjeevani Rural Development Society (led by Pachari Devullu, who has preserved over 300 native seed varieties across Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, and Srikakulam districts) and the Deccan Development Society have played a catalytic role.
- The Eastern Ghats, one of India's biodiversity hotspots, is home to rare landraces and wild relatives of economically important crops — genetic resources of global significance for food security under climate change.
- The revival movement counters the dominant trend of monoculture and hybrid/GM seed dependency, which has reduced genetic diversity in Indian agriculture over the past five decades.
Static Topic Bridges
Agrobiodiversity, Landraces, and the Seed Sovereignty Debate
Agrobiodiversity refers to the variety and variability of animals, plants, and micro-organisms that are used directly or indirectly for food and agriculture. Landraces are locally adapted, traditional crop varieties developed by farmers over generations — they are genetically diverse, resilient to local pests and climate conditions, and carry cultural significance. The Green Revolution (1960s–70s) dramatically increased agricultural yields but also narrowed the genetic base of staple crops: a handful of high-yielding varieties (HYVs) replaced thousands of landraces. This genetic erosion is now a food security concern because narrower genetic diversity makes crops more vulnerable to new pests, diseases, and climate extremes.
- India is one of the 12 Vavilov Centres of Origin of cultivated plants — a mega-biodiversity zone for crops
- India has over 45,000 known plant species; the Eastern Ghats alone has hundreds of endemic varieties
- National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR): India's nodal agency for conservation of plant genetic resources; maintains ex-situ gene banks
- Community seed banks: decentralised, community-managed seed conservation systems that preserve in-situ diversity; complement formal gene banks
- Seed sovereignty: the right of farmers to save, use, exchange, and sell seeds — a contested principle vis-a-vis intellectual property regimes
Connection to this news: The Eastern Ghats seed network is a living example of in-situ agrobiodiversity conservation — preserving not just seeds but the ecological knowledge, cultural practices, and farming systems associated with them.
Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001 (PPVFR Act)
India's PPVFR Act 2001 is a unique legal framework that simultaneously protects plant breeders' intellectual property and recognises farmers' traditional rights. It established a sui generis system distinct from the patent regime and consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The Act allows breeders to register new varieties and earn royalties, while explicitly preserving farmers' rights to save, resow, exchange, and sell seeds — including protected varieties — as long as they do not brand them as the registered variety. Critically, farmers who conserve wild relatives and landraces are entitled to recognition and reward from the National Gene Fund.
- PPVFR Authority: quasi-judicial body that registers varieties, adjudicates breeders' rights, and administers the Gene Fund
- Four criteria for variety registration: Novelty, Distinctness, Uniformity, Stability (NDUS)
- Farmer rights under Section 39: can save, use, sow, resow, exchange, share, or sell farm produce including seed — but cannot sell branded registered variety seed commercially
- Farmers as breeders: a farmer who develops a new variety is entitled to register it and receive protection equivalent to a commercial breeder
- Recognition for conservation: farmers conserving landraces and wild relatives are entitled to rewards from the National Gene Fund — a provision rarely operationalised in practice
Connection to this news: The Eastern Ghats farmers conserving indigenous varieties are, in legal terms, entitled to recognition under the PPVFR Act's Gene Fund provisions — though this linkage between grassroots conservation and formal legal entitlement remains largely unrealised.
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Nagoya Protocol, and Benefit Sharing
The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD, 1992) established three linked goals: conservation of biodiversity, sustainable use of its components, and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources (Access and Benefit Sharing, ABS). The Nagoya Protocol (2010, in force 2014) operationalised ABS: countries and communities providing genetic resources must give prior informed consent (PIC), and those accessing resources must share benefits — monetary and non-monetary — with the providers. India implemented the Nagoya Protocol through the Biological Diversity Act (2002) and its amendment (2023).
- CBD: 196 parties; India ratified in 1994; secretariat in Montreal
- Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022): the "30x30" target — protect 30% of land and oceans by 2030; also includes ABS objectives
- Nagoya Protocol: requires bilateral agreements between resource users (researchers, companies) and provider countries/communities; India's National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) administers this
- Biological Diversity Act 2002: establishes NBA, State Biodiversity Boards, Biodiversity Management Committees at local body level
- Benefit sharing in practice: largely underdeveloped; most value captured by commercial entities rather than farming communities who conserved the genetic resources
Connection to this news: The indigenous seed revival in the Eastern Ghats represents exactly the kind of community genetic resource conservation that the CBD-Nagoya framework is designed to recognise and reward — yet structural barriers prevent farming communities from accessing formal ABS mechanisms.
Key Facts & Data
- Eastern Ghats: a biodiversity hotspot spanning Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu; home to rare endemics
- Sanjeevani Rural Development Society: preserves 300+ indigenous seed varieties across four AP districts
- India's NBPGR gene bank: holds over 0.46 million accessions of plant genetic resources — one of the world's largest
- PPVFR Act 2001: Section 39 protects farmer rights to save and exchange seeds; National Gene Fund rewards conservation
- CBD adopted: 1992 (Rio Earth Summit); Nagoya Protocol: 2010 (Nagoya, Japan); in force: 2014
- Kunming-Montreal GBF "30x30": protect 30% of Earth's land and oceans by 2030
- India's Biological Diversity Act: 2002; amended 2023 (to ease compliance for domestic research and AYUSH sector)
- Green Revolution impact: India went from 30,000+ rice varieties to a handful of HYVs dominating commercial cultivation