Loading...
Probable Agricultural Biodiversity Heritage Sites in India: XXI. The Malabar Region 1
Malabar, the southwestern coastal region of India, is the wettest and biodiversity-richest region in the country. Agriculture has been practiced in the region from ancient times, involving the majority of the people. The ingenuity of the people in evolving agriculture is refl ected in the extensive...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Printed Book |
| Published: |
Asian Agri-History
2014
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://10.26.1.76/ks/005459.pdf |
| Summary: | Malabar, the southwestern coastal region of India, is the wettest and biodiversity-richest
region in the country. Agriculture has been practiced in the region from ancient times,
involving the majority of the people. The ingenuity of the people in evolving agriculture is
refl ected in the extensive water management system, the backwaters in the low-lying areas
of the coastal region, and in harmoniously using the conditions for wet cultivation of rice
by developing systems such as ‘pokkali’ and ‘kaipad’, and ‘home garden’ suiting to the
tropical conditions of the region. Further, the region can be credited for the domestication
and introduction of a number of crop species from different parts of the world, enriching
its agrobiodiversity. Its rich spice-diversity has led to the region being called the ‘land
of spices’. Cultivation of enriched agrobiodiversity under diverse agroecosystems and
production systems has generated rich genetic diversity in most crops, to the extent that
the region has been considered one of the secondary centers of diversity for rice, primary
center of origin and diversity for black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, jackfruit, etc., and
important center of diversity for several other crops such as turmeric, ginger, bitter gourd,
banana, etc. For these contributions of the local communities, providing livelihood support
and conserving genetic diversity in a large number of crops, the region is being proposed
as another National Agricultural Biodiversity Heritage Site. The present article discusses
some of these contributions in brief. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | p.(311–341) Vol. 18, No. 4, 2014 |