Bio-diversity

With the introduction of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and hybrid varieties and modern cultivation practices, Nepal s indigenous crop varieties have been dwindling and even vanishing at an alarming rate. This is creating big threats on local crop varieties, and consequently, challenges for existing biodiversity. The indigenous varieties of food crops are considered to be better in taste as well as more wholesome in terms of nutritious value than the artificially developed hybrid varieties. This applies particularly to locally grown cereal crops, legumes, vegetables and many other locally grown minor crops like millet and buckwheat. Bhimtar and Lagarche VDC of Sindhupalchok District, the former being characterized by flatter terraces and the latter exhibiting steeper slopes have also been subject to the impacts of the above phenomena of detrimental, albeit so called modern, agricultural practices with the result that areas that were famous for tasty black grams are now devoid of their indigenous leguminous species of crops thereby threatening the existing biodiversity with imminent extinction. Thus the project aims to support local farmers in the protection and promotion of agro-biodiversity and sustainable agriculture and facilitate local farmers in the adoption and promotion of organic farming with indigenous varieties of cereals, legumes, minor cereals and vegetables.

Nepal