Recently, Rahibai Popere, popularly known as Seedmother, from Akole taluka of Ahmednagar, Maharashtra was accorded with Padma award for her work that has helped save hundreds of landraces (wild varieties of commonly grown crops) at the village level. Landraces refer to naturally occurring variants of commonly cultivated crops.
Implication of Replacement of Landraces by Commercial Cultivars: It increases and causes genetic erosion by the replacement of diverse landraces with comparatively few, homozygous modern cultivars, which caused considerable concern among conservationists and breeders alike. Landrace replacement by modern cultivars demonstrated a marked reduction in overall genetic diversity.
