SASHYA: Preservation of God`s Gold

Prithwa Ghosh , Chirantan Mandal, Gopal Das , Biky Das, Moumita Mukherjee , Rahul Dutta, Payel Guchhait , Rohan Das, Priyanka Samanta, Sayantan Ghosh

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Each crop variety has immeasurable impacts not only on agriculture but also on biodiversity. To prevent the extinction of some rare and historic plant varieties, we have started a project to preserve the seeds of these plants and establish a seed bank. Seed banks store rare commercial seeds for cultivation or further study and research. The Seed Bank focuses on protecting indigenous crop varieties and minimizing the risk of extinction. In general, there are two types of seeds, "Orthodox seeds" and "Recalcitrant Seeds” which are considered in reference to seed bank storage. It focuses primarily on orthodox seed species to withstand drought and / or freeze during ex situ conservation. To complete this project, we have performed the following steps:  Collection of seeds: we collected healthy, ripe, indigenous seeds from the farmers door step.  Preparation of Seeds for preservation: Separate and clean them followed by drying the seeds for better storage life.  Packaging of the seeds: We packed the seeds in an air tight container with an arid condition.  Storage of the Seeds: Then packaged seeds were preserved in suitable environment.  Periodic germination test of the seeds: To prevent deterioration problem of seed we have germinated them from time to time. Besides that, we did some statistical analysis of seeds as well as cotyledons on the basis of several parameters to check the quality of seeds for further biotechnological applications like Tissue culture, Protoplast fusion etc. Till now we have stored more than 40 types of indigenous variety of different grains, pulses and oil seeds in previous 45 days with their proper database.

Volume 7 Issue 7, July-2022

Pages : 1487 - 1492