Pulak Ranjan Nayak

Women participation in participatory varietal seed selection in Keonjhar district in Odisha.Photo: WASSAN Before the monsoon reaches Odisha’s uplands, seed work begins indoors. In many millet-growing villages, women sit on mud floors with baskets of finger millet panicles stored from the previous harvest. Panicles are opened carefully, grain by grain. Some seeds are set aside because they are bold and mature early.

Abstract Crop genetic diversity and in situ conservation of traditional varieties play a vital and complementary role in biodiversity conservation, capturing not only genetic resources but also the dynamic evolutionary processes that sustain them. In the present study, thirteen traditional Odisha finger millet varieties, selected from a larger set of 46 conserved by tribal millet farmers, were evaluated across four diverse growing regions.