In 1997, this Odisha man left his job and built a seed bank that hands out traditional rice varieties to farmers; years later, Debal Deb’s effort is rescuing India’s rice diversity |
In 1997, ecologist and conservation scientist Debal Deb established Vrihi, a seed bank created to conserve traditional rice varieties and revive the older practice of exchanging seeds without treating them as a commercial product. Nearly three decades later, his collection has grown to 1,480 rice landraces collected from indigenous farmers in India and from farmers…
