Identification of potential sites for in situ conservation of landraces associated with forest ecosystem – Geomatics approach

Landraces may be defined as a locally adapted strain of a species bred through traditional methods of direct selection. There has been a continuous threat to these landraces due to outcrossing, migration of cultivators to the urban areas and replacement of high yielding varieties with traditional cr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current science (Bangalore) 2004-10, Vol.87 (8), p.1115-1122
Main Authors: Ravan, Shirish, Kale, Manish, Roy, P. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural land
Biodiversity conservation
Crops
Deciduous forests
Degraded forests
Food crops
Forest ecosystems
Forest litter
RESEARCH COMMUNICATIONS
Topographical elevation
Villages
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Summary:Landraces may be defined as a locally adapted strain of a species bred through traditional methods of direct selection. There has been a continuous threat to these landraces due to outcrossing, migration of cultivators to the urban areas and replacement of high yielding varieties with traditional crops. Among many reasons to conserve forest ecosystem, landraces can be one of the important reasons, which focuses on protecting agro-biodiversity existing in the vicinity of forest ecosystem. One of the important observations was that, these landraces were present in proximity of forest areas where forest floor litter serves as source of manure. So it is implicit that without forests these crops cannot sustain. Forest floor litter, which is generally abundant in the study area, is gradually converted to humus, which during rainy seasons goes down-streams to agricultural areas. No chemical fertilizers are used for growing these crops. Since mapping of landraces using remote sensing data is difficult, an alternative approach is proposed for 'Mapping Potential Land Race Zone' rather than delineating agricultural patches. Land races are governed largely by terrain complexity and remoteness of villages. This information coupled with land-use land cover map provides basis to perform multi criteria modeling, thus helping in identifying potential land race zones.
ISSN:0011-3891