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

摘要

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.