Assam’s native paddy varieties set to make waves

GUWAHATI: These are like the choicest nutritional diamonds from the Brahmaputra Valley.

Four native rice varieties, which are nutrient-rich and sumptuous, will be on the platter in Assam from Wednesday when a charitable trust launches them under the brand “Native Basket”.

The “Foundation for Development Integration” will launch 100 quintals each of “Amona Bao”, “Kola Joha”, “Ronga Bao” and “Boga Betguti”. Each variety has high contents of amylose, protein, dietary fibre, and oil as recognised by the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India. Amona Bao is also flood-resistant.

The trust, launched as an NGO in 1998, works with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

Back in 2017, its members embarked on a journey by boat on the Brahmaputra from eastern Assam’s Sadiya to western Assam’s Dhubri bordering Bangladesh. The idea was to collect the samples of local paddy varieties and work on them.

“We began a search for the local paddy varieties in 2017. That year, 30 varieties were identified. The number rose to over 200 in 2019 and 318 this year,” the trust chairman Rajib Sarma said.

The nutritional profiling of 173 variants has been already done at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources but the trust prioritised 24 varieties and to begin with, it selected four of them for marketing from Wednesday.

Sarma said Assam has thousands of native paddy varieties but they were slowly getting lost.

“We wanted to conserve them following our observation that they were slowly getting lost from us. Only a handful of them survived due to their importance in rituals,” he said.

The trust works with some 2,000 families of farmers, three farmer producer organisations, and five self help groups. It has its presence in three districts of Assam and two districts of Nagaland.

“We impart training to the farmers and give them seeds. Our involvement is right from the farm to the market. So, we are engaged in the entire value chain,” Sarma said, adding, “I have no doubt that the margin of profit of the farmers will increase substantially.”