Managing agrobiodiversity: Farmers' changing perspectives and institutional responses in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region

There are important reasons why agrobiodiversity is currently a trendy topic. On one hand there is the prospect of dramatic transformation in world agriculture through the technology of genetic modification of material preserved in gene banks. On the other hand is the argument against the spread of intensive monoculture in agricultural practice, favoring instead a view of sustainability through multiple cropping systems with land races maintained by the local knowledge of farming communities. Managing Agrobiodiversity offers food for thought on the pros and cons of ex situ and in situ approaches. Produced in conjunction with the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, this book brings together research from the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region on the state of its agrobiodiversity. Forty short chapters are divided into seven parts covering themes concerned with the relationship between agrobiodiversity and cultural diversity, processes of market transformation acting on subsistence cropping, and management issues for conservation of the variety of domesticated plants and animals.