Reviving Vegetable Diversity: A Seed Savers Guide

Book review

Cover - Reviving Vegetable Diversity

Barely twenty years ago, around Puducherry, the staple food was fermented ragi and a particular variety of kambu (Bajra). That variety of kambu is now virtually extinct and today’s staple food is polished white rice. Traditional varieties of bottle gourds and pumpkins were commonly seen trailing all over the roofs of village homes. Now we only see TV cables.

Indian farmers had developed around 200,000 varieties of paddy for hundreds of specific uses and growing conditions. Today they are all but gone as the Green Revolution introduced dwarf varieties to promote agri-business. Also the number of vegetable species and the different types of each vegetable have almost been wiped-out in the past century. But vegetable diversity is critical to human health and well-being and undeniably, the nutritive power of a chemically-grown cabbage is not the same as of an organically-grown one.

Fortunately, some of the once-rich diversity still survives, in remote areas and in people’s backyard gardens. Protecting this diversity is critical if the species are not to be lost forever. In Reviving Vegetable Diversity – a seed saver’s guide Deepika Kundaji, an organic gardener and seed saver who has preserved more than 90 traditionally-bred vegetable varieties and who has worked since 1994 with non-commercial vegetable varieties at Auroville’s Pebble Garden, highlights diversity within vegetables and illustrates how to effectively conserve it.

The booklet covers the basics of seed-production – what is a good seed, what is a pure seed and why ‘maintaining purity’, which is not traditional practice, is necessary today. It takes up popular vegetables such as Lady’s Finger, Brinjal, Tomato, Chili and Gourds, and shows the simple techniques with which anyone can propagate pure and good seeds that are of excellent quality.

The booklet is an introductory guide which focuses on the crops that can be grown in the Auroville area. The lay farmer will benefit from the conscious absence of intimidating ‘scientific’ terms and technical jargon normally considered necessary to discuss this subject. For more information one is invited to contact the author, who also conducts workshops on vegetable seed saving, at deepikakundaji@gmail.com.

The booklet has been translated into Oriya and Tamil, but these translations still await publication.