Articles

LOST IN THE GREEN REVOLUTION, MANY-HUED VARIETIES OF PADDY ARE BEING REVIVED IN KERALA

By Leneesh k On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

Rice Diversity Blocks in Kerala and five other states preserve over 1,000 indigenous varieties of rice that were at risk of being lost.In the Indian subcontinent, the birthplace of paddy, the colours of the crop’s many varieties are as diverse as the land, its people, languages, cultures, costumes, dialects and so on. But most of that variety was l ... read full article

JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF RICE DIVERSITY

By Ushakumari S On 14 May 2019 | Category : Nature

East India and Dr Richharia are in the hearts of every person who works on rice diversity. I have heard and read a lot about the region and the person several years back and have recently begun travelling there. I am also meeting and hearing about rice from many of my friends who work on agro biodiversity in eastern India. We have alsobegun hearin ... read full article

BLACK RICE- OUR DELICIOUS, HEALTHY HERITAGE

By Sreedevi Lekshmikutty On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

My first sight of black rice was a few years back during a seed festival organized by the Save Our Rice Campaign. I was fascinated by the purple black grain glistening in my palm. I did not buy it then nor did I attempt to cook it. That happened a few years later. By then I had become involved intensively in the Rice Campaign and passionate about t ... read full article

Fighting salinity by reviving traditional rice varieties

By Anitha Reddy On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

Hit by crop failure due to increased salinity in soil, owing to water surge in the natural tanks, farmers of the Tumkur1 and Chitradurga areas of Karnataka are reverting to cultivation of traditional saline tolerant paddy in the hope that it would feed them. The fields of farmers in the region that adjoins the tank command area was rendered saline ... read full article

UNCULTIVATED GREENS IN A WETLAND PADDY ECOSYSTEM

By Priyanka M On 14 May 2019 | Category : Nature

The paddy field is a wetland ecosystem, which is not only an agricultural land but also a biodiversity rich area. Different species of medicinal plants, snails, birds, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, frogs, and fishes present in the paddy fields are interdependent and also depend on the wetland. This mutual interaction and interdepend ... read full article

SEED AND FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN CHHATTISGARH

By Ilina Sen On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

Rupantar has had the good fortune of having worked with the indigenous communities of south Chhattisgarh for over two decades. The indigenous communities of Chhattisgarh have been food sovereign in ways not fully comprehended by the scientific community right up to the present time. To make an attempt to understand this reality, one has to understa ... read full article

KERALA’S BATTLE TO PROTECT ITS PADDY LANDS

By Harish Vasudevan On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

Rice is the staple diet of the Keralite today. Till about two decades back Keralites used to consume millets like ragi, little millet, foxtail millet and also tubers like yam, tapioca etc in large quantities. However, now rice is consumed during all three meals in different forms. Therefore, rice is an important component of life in Kerala, even mo ... read full article

Did you say High Yield?

By Debal Deb On 14 May 2019 | Category : Nature

In spite of all the hype and false promises, the yield of hybrid rice in India has seldom exceeded 6.5t/ha under irrigated condition on farmers’ fields.1 On marginal farms (e.g. rainfed drylands, submerged lowlands, and coastal saline farms), the yield of hybrid as well as any modern rice varieties remains abysmally poor. The reason is simple: none ... read full article

BIRDS IN RICE PADDY ECO-SYSTEM

By Raju Kavil On 14 May 2019 | Category : Nature

Paddy is one of the most important grains in the developing world. It is cultivated in at least 114 countries, in an area of 156 million hectares. Half of the world population is dependent on paddy rice for their food. Hence there is an economic system developed based on paddy rice and there is a unique art and culture based on rice . ... read full article

THROUGH KARNATAKA IN SEARCH OF RICE SEEDS, FOOD AND FARMERS

By Sreedevi Lekshmikutty On 14 May 2019 | Category : Agriculture

We began our journey, Usha from Trivandrum and me joining her in Coimbatore, on the 19th of October with a detailed itinerary provided by Seema of Save Our Rice campaign, Karnataka. The first stop in the journey was appropriately enough at Seema and Krishna Prasad’s house, in Mysore, where we arrived at lunch time to be served the delicious Rajamud ... read full article

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