Executive Director of the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation Dr Ajay Parida said the year 2010 has been declared by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Biodiversity to highlight the threat that climate change poses to agriculture. The daylong meeting is part of the consultation process to develop an effective community management of biodiversity in an era of climate change involving policymakers, scientists and grassroots institutions to discuss and suggest locally relevant and adaptive strategies to meet multiple adverse effects of climate change on food, water and livelihood security of people in Odisha. A similar exercise has already been concluded in Kerala.

The magnitude of the loss of biodiversity can be gauged from the fact that only about 200 out of 3,500 varieties of paddy identifiable in the Jeypore region of Koraput district in the 1960s can be found today. The preference for hybrid varieties for better yield, lack of awareness among policymakers, non-inclusion of the indigent populace in policy formulation and general degradation of the environment due to natural and manmade causes have taken a heavy toll on the biodiversity of paddy in this place that is considered the centre of origin of rice.

The non-profit trust is working to preserve agro-biodiversity through bottom-up approach to implement programmes by involving the local population, participatory approach to conserve agro-biodiversity and ecosystems with focus on in-situ farm conservation and biotechnical approach to restore extinct plant species. It has already tasted success in reviving the Kalajeera variety of rice in the Jeypore area in Koraput and is making efforts to ensure remunerative price to cultivators.