Agrobiodiversity and Food Security in Risk prone Agro-ecosystems: An Appraisal
of Tribals’ Wisdom
Ranjay K. Singh
College of Horticulture and Forestry, Central Agricultural University, Pasighat-791102,
Arunachal Pradesh, India, Email: ranjay_jbp@rediffmail.com
ABSTRACT
The tribal farmers, over the millennia have given us an invaluable heritage of thousands of locally adapted
genotypes of major and minor crops and they are habituated to survive under the risk-prone and harsh agroecosystems by using the local plants as well as they rely on the availability of crop biodiversity which they
have conserved locally by their own informal experimental wisdom. Looking to the importance of this issue,
an attempt has been made to learn and document the indigenous knowledge systems associated with the crops
diversity under subtropical conditions. To achieve this objective, the study has been carried out among the
Aadi tribe in few purposively selected villages of Pasighat areas, East Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh,
India. The data pertaining to study have been recorded by using the participatory observations and focus
group discussions in combination with the personal interview method and data were analyzed by using the
descriptive statistics to draw the inference from study. The result obtained from the study indicated that tribal
people are having tremendous knowledge to diversify the crop under risk-prone agro-ecosystems according to
their local needs and internal resources. Many indigenous varieties of cereals (mainly paddy and millet crops)
pulses, oil seeds vegetables and spices are being conserved under the shifting cultivation system. There are 74
indigenous varieties of these crops, which are locally grown, conserved and used to fulfill the diversified
needs. In creating diversification under the rainfed farming situations, women wisdom are more useful than
men folk and have domesticated many local plants varieties under the shifting cultivation for the food
security. Few of the local varieties of vegetables and spices are now getting more credit in the local market
and economically viable for the women empowerment. The tribal women are custodians and treasures of
plants’ knowledge and are able to identify the edible and non-edible wild plants and they prepare many ethnic
foods rich in nutrients, and are compatible to the location, ecology, economy, ethnicity, culture and more than
this, humane in nature. To diversify the crops for narrowing the risk in uneven land, the gender and locally
available resources play significant role and environmental sustainability of highly extinctive plants is assured
by domesticating it in the shifting land and kitchen garden. Type of soil, fertility status, moisture level,
topography and distance to approach the crop fields, are leading factors considered by tribal people to grow
and diversify the indigenous crops varieties. In management and cultivation aspects of these crops, various
informal traditional institutions are helpful in which women find their own role to play. The risk in production
under risk-prone agro-ecosystems is reduced by adopting location specific strategies, creating
microenvironment and using different cropping systems to sustain the local varieties. Commercialization of
agriculture by the resource-rich farmers had resulted to increase the areas of monoculture and affected to
replace many local varieties of pulse crops (beans) from the shifting land, which has caused threats to the
nutrient supply for the soil as well as human beings and reduced in the amount of local genetic stock.
Keywords: Agro-biodiversity, tribal farmers, risk-prone agro-ecosystems, women folk, indigenous knowledge
systems