International Seed Day 2026: In Bengal’s fragile landscapes, traditional seeds are holding the line against climate stress

In the fragile islands of the Sundarbans, farmers are turning back to traditional seeds as climate shocks expose the limits of hybrid varieties in saline and cyclone-prone fields.

When Cyclone Yaas tore through the Sundarbans, West Bengal, it left behind a familiar trail of destruction — flattened fields, lost harvests and shattered hopes. But in a small plot in Kultali block, one paddy variety stood its ground. Mrinal Samanta, a seed conservator from Purba Gurguria village in South 24 Pargana district, began collecting traditional varieties after Cyclone Aila. The variety, tangrashal, had survived where others failed. Within a year, seeds from that single resilient patch were shared with 70 farmers, and what began as a 5×5 metre trial now spreads across nearly 30 acres, quietly rewriting the story of farming in a climate-vulnerable landscape.

Similarly, in several blocks of the Sundarbans, farmers continue to cultivate traditional varieties of paddy, pulses and vegetables that are adapted to local agroecological conditions. Paddy varieties such as gobindobhog, dudheswar, chamar mani, pakhi, leelabati and marich sal, and pulses such as kali moong, hari moong and grass pea, remain in circulation because they often recover better after climatic shocks.

Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), an NGO, has been working with small-scale farmers in rainfed areas of India. WASSAN, in collaboration with SWISSAID, has implemented the CROPS4HD programme in Odisha, West Bengal and Karnataka. CROPS4HD aims to improve the food security and nutrition of smallholder farmers, especially women, through the sustainable use and conservation of farmers’ varieties and neglected and underutilised species through agroecological approaches.

In 2023, under the CROPS4HD programme, the Working Group on Seed System (WGoSS), RRA Network and WASSAN, in collaboration with local NGOs and with the help of the Development Research Communication and Services Centre, conducted a comprehensive study on crop diversity, its utilisation and seed systems in the Sundarbans areas of West Bengal. The findings from the study showed that traditional varieties remain central to farming decisions in many parts of the area. Farmers reported that nearly 50 to 60 per cent of seeds still come from their own traditional varieties. This dependence on farmer-saved seed becomes especially important after cyclones, when hybrid seed often fails to withstand conditions or when high-yielding varieties do not perform well under extreme climates.

In the years following major storms, farmers often expand the area under traditional crops because their seeds have already adapted to local conditions. That pattern is visible in paddy fields. For instance, tangrashal is a traditional rice variety grown by local farmers. It is widely known for its lodging resistance. In cyclone-prone coastal belts, where strong winds flatten standing crops, tangrashal can withstand such conditions.

The spread of tangrashal is closely linked to the work of Lokamata Rani Rashmoni Mission, an NGO that has been promoting traditional crop conservation in Kultali, Kakdwip, Sagar and Hingalganj blocks in the Sundarbans. Farmers in these coastal blocks value varieties that can withstand both erratic weather and unstable soils.

Other organisations in the Sundarbans are also promoting the conservation of disappearing traditional seed diversity. Paribesh Unnoyan Parisad, an NGO working on Sagar Island, has conserved traditional paddy varieties while also sensitising school students to organic farming and local seed heritage. In a region where younger generations often move away from farming, such exposure plays a crucial role in ensuring traditional seeds remain in memory.

Further east in the delta, the Society for Durbachati Social Action & Transformation now conserves more than 200 traditional paddy varieties. It has built a local seed bank and supplies farmer-preferred varieties within surrounding villages. Some grains from these traditional varieties also reach Sufal Bangla, an initiative of the Government of West Bengal that aims to provide fresh produce to consumers at affordable prices while ensuring better returns for farmers.

These efforts suggest that seed conservation in West Bengal is no longer limited to preserving rare varieties in isolation. It increasingly intersects with local markets, nutrition and climate adaptation.

To understand which traditional crops still perform best under current field conditions, WASSAN has also moved beyond documentation into field trials. In Kultali and Basanti blocks of the Sundarbans, demonstration trials of amaranthus and green gram were conducted over two seasons to identify preferred varieties and evaluate how they perform in different locations. Some of the farmers’ preferred varieties of amaranthus include bannuru dantu, altapati, jabakusum, chhatrabhang and katwah, and green gram varieties such as jet moong, sona moong and kali moong.

Researchers from Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya and Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Educational and Research Institute are working with farmers to test traditional green gram varieties across seven blocks of the Sundarbans. The trials are examining how these pulses perform under different levels of soil salinity, soil types and water availability. Early results from the field trials show promising signs. A traditional variety called kali moong recorded the strongest plant growth and the highest yield among all the varieties tested, followed by bold sona. Kali moong also showed the highest nutritional value, with greater levels of protein and sugars (31.29 per cent more protein content than the best-performing check variety).

These results suggest that kali moong is particularly well suited to the challenging coastal conditions of the Sundarbans, showing strong adaptability and resilience where farming is increasingly affected by salinity and a changing climate. Such evaluations matter because pulses are becoming increasingly important in coastal farming systems where short-duration crops are needed between uncertain rainfall windows.

Similar initiatives on seed systems have been taken up by the WGoSS and the RRA Network in collaboration with other local NGO partners. Crop diversity blocks, supported by the Bharat Agroecology Fund (BAF), where paddy and green gram in the Sundarbans and finger millet and barnyard millet in Bankura district are being cultivated, showcase diversity and are promoted for DUS characterisation — documenting distinctness, uniformity and stability, and evaluating the performance of local varieties. Seed multiplication of paddy and millets has also been carried out to ensure larger quantities of local seed remain available for farmers.

In 2024, WGoSS and the RRA Network engaged interns to document the stories of seed saviours across South Bengal — farmers who continue to preserve, exchange and grow traditional seeds. In 2025, with support from the Global Fund for Community Foundations, this effort expanded to the Sundarbans and North Bengal. The work focused on recording crop diversity and collecting detailed information on each variety, including local names, traits, adaptation features and cultivation history.

More than 350 farmers were interviewed individually and in groups during this exercise. Passport data helped identify why certain varieties survive in specific landscapes — whether because they tolerate salinity, mature early, resist lodging or match local food preferences.

Even today, seed banks across India are managed by local communities and cater to farmers. However, they do have limitations. Due to climate change, the importance of traditional varieties has increased. They are adaptable and carry seed biomes. Healthy seeds carry healthy microbes; healthy microbes support a healthy gut. It is one unbroken chain, from the soil to the seed to the food plate.

Yet this rich heritage remains invisible. Institutionalisation of seed systems for traditional varieties is the need of the hour. It calls for increased public investment and proactive government support to systematically map and document these varieties, undertake evaluation trials on farmers’ fields, and carry out their characterisation. It also emphasises making this knowledge accessible to farmers, along with strengthening efforts in nutritional profiling and developing appropriate processing and storage infrastructure.

Doing so will not only conserve agrobiodiversity but also unlock its potential as a practical tool for smallholder farmers, especially those in vulnerable rainfed regions facing the growing impacts of climate change.

Shubhadeep Mondal and Marreddy Leelavathi are programme officers, Seed System for Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN), Hyderabad. Abhijit Mohanty works as a programme manager, knowledge building, WASSAN, Bhubaneswar. Bhagyalaxmi is an associate director for WASSAN and convenor of Working Group on Seed System, RRA Network. Views expressed are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect those of Down To Earth.