Better breeds require better environment. Whereas moderate breeds can sustain in a poor and local environment, it is sustainable and suitable for farming community.
So, indigenous bovine breeds should be conserved,” observed Prof SK Das of Animal Breeding and Genetics while presenting a research paper ‘Indigenous domestic livestock biodiversity of Odisha and strategy’ on the second and concluding day of the Odisha Environment Congress 2013 here on Tuesday.
“We need to design science based on socioeconomic profiles of the stakeholders,” he said, advocating indigenous breeds of cattle and buffalos and stressed on stopping of crossbreeding.
Prof Das, who is responsible for the registration of four new breeds 31, 32, 33 and 34 in the list of cattle of the Government of India’s Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said these breeds took thousands of years of natural process to sustain which is friendly to farmers in the environment.
“These four indigenous breeds like Binjharpuri, Khariar, Ghumsuri and Motu are unique from other varieties. These varieties are well in low input system, resistant and suitable to local climatic conditions having individual variability, though low milk breeder,” he said, adding, “It can be explored through planned breeding programmes.”
Besides cattle, he said, there are two indigenous varieties of buffalos such as Chilika and Kalahandi listed as Nos. 11 and 13 in the FAO list which are also unique. “The Chilika variety is the only one that thrives on saline weeds and its curd can be preserved in room conditions for five days.” The Kalahandi variety is the best milk breeder, he added.”
Bishnupada Sethi, Dr Sanat Mishra, MK Ghosal, D Behera, N Sahoo, PK Sahu and PK Rout also spoke on bullock farming system and indigenous varieties. RN Senapati, Dr Saujendra Swain, Piyush Rout, Prakash Nayak, Sanjeev Chadha, Dr Balaram Sahu and Natabar Sarangi spoke on subjects like mainstreaming urban farming in Bhubaneswar city planning, food sovereignty and traditional varieties of rice, grass root innovations and traditional knowledge systems for monitoring organic farming and food preservation.
The last session was chaired by Jagdananda and attended by Arabind Behera, Prof Radhamohan, Sudarsan Das, Babu Ambat, DK Roy and Dr GN Indresha.
The Young Scientist Award was presented to Dr Anuj KS Parihar, Research Associate of NAIP on Carbon Finance, OUAT (Bhubaneswar). The theme of the next congress was selected as ‘Environment and Climate Change’.
The Declaration of the Odisha Environment Congress 2013 included: (1) Impact of environment on agriculture and vice versa should be given importance in policy formulation; (2) There should be appropriate balance between economic development and environment to fulfil minimum need and improve quality of life of people of the State; (3) In order to ensure food security, Odisha should adhere to an “Evergreen green revolution” adopting organic farming and indigenous knowledge; (4) Since considerable portion of the State’s population comprise youth, efforts should be made to make agriculture a profitable venture to attract more and more unemployed youth to take this as a profession; (5) Efforts should be there to promote climate-smart agriculture practices for ensuring food security through sustainable agriculture and enhanced livelihood while adopting to climate change and conserving biodiversity, natural resources, cultural resources, culinary resources and environmental services; (6) There is a need for developing certain pilot models on group approach of locally-adopted and sustainable agriculture (GAlASA) taking into consideration indigenous technology and knowledge (ITK) local genetic resources, organic manures, micro and macro climatic conditions and also environment.