The country's strength in fighting the future challenges before agriculture, including those posed by climate change and the emergence of new diseases and pests, lies in the enormous wealth of agricultural biodiversity that it possesses. No doubt, while many useful species of plants and animals are believed to have vanished due to either indiscriminate exploitation or sheer neglect, much of the diversity is still left that can provide the genes to modify crops and animals to enable them to adapt to the changed circumstances. Rampant bio-piracy has also deprived the country of some valuable genetic resources though it is difficult to estimate the losses due to all such factors.
However, the good thing is that efforts are already afoot to preserve the biological wealth and also to generate evidence to establish the country's sovereign right over them should any challenge similar to that faced by basmati, neem and turmeric after being patented abroad, arise.
Significantly, India is bestowed with rich diversity in not only plant resources but also in livestock, aquatic creatures, micro-organisms and other biological entities. As such, India enjoys a prominent place among the world's 12 mega-gene centres. In fact, two of the total 31 recognised global hot-spots of biodiversity are located in India. These are the north-eastern Himalayas and the western ghats.
On the whole, India holds about 11.9 per cent of the world's flora (about 5,725 species) and 10 per cent of the microbial biodiversity. In the livestock sector, about 30 accredited breeds of cattle, 10 of buffaloes, 42 of sheep, 20 of goats, eight of camels, six of horses, three of pigs, 18 of poultry and some of other species like yak, mithun and ducks are found in the country. Besides, nearly 2,200 species of fish and shell fish are reckoned to inhabit the subcontinent's water bodies.
However, the unabated loss of natural habitats due to increased human activity and displacement of traditional crops, varieties and land races with improved high-yielding strains is posing a continuous threat to the existing biodiversity. This has enhanced the urgency for conserving this germplasm either in situ (in the fields) or in gene banks.
Fortunately, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has already made a significant headway in this sphere. For this, it has set up four national genetic resource conservation bureaus. These are: the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR), the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources (NBAGR), the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR) and the National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms (NBAIM).
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Taking this initiative further, the ICAR now proposes to set up a similar bureau even for the preservation of the country's insect resources. To be called the National Bureau of Agricultural Insect Resources, this collection will be of great value for future research in not only entomology but also in other disciplines, including the preservation of natural ecological balance. Already, an insect specimen collection, said to be the largest and the best maintained in southeast Asia, exists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (Pusa institute) in Delhi.
Contrary to the common perception that insects and pests are harmful for crops and serve as carriers of plant, animal and human diseases, the truth is that many of them are beneficial for crops and for human beings too. While some insects feed on the larvae of crop pests and, thus, protect the crops, several others, such as butterflies and honeybees, act as pollinators, facilitating grain formation in crops and horticultural plants.
The country's plant germplasm repository (gene bank) is also very large, comprising over 2,47,000 samples, including about 28,000 wild relatives of various indigenous crops gathered during exploration missions. This pool has been expanded substantially by importing about 2.1 million seed and planting material samples of agricultural and horticultural crops, including transgenic material and wild species, from other countries and global farm research centres. The exotic genes have served the country well in the past (the green revolution was based on dwarf, input-responsive wheat and rice germplasm obtained from abroad), and can be of value in future as well.
Indeed, while all this is creditable, there still is no room for any complacency on the genetic resource preservation front. Considering that access to exotic materials is likely to become more and more difficult due to the emerging stringent intellectual property regime, effort needs to be redoubled to acquire germplasm from every conceivable source and preserved for prosperity.