How Assam’s Farmers Are Losing Their Indigenous Seeds |
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Today, April 26, is celebrated as International Seed Day.
“Our fields are still green, but they no longer carry the same aroma,” said 42-year-old Bijit Kutum, sitting on the edge of his paddy field in Balijan Adarso village in Golaghat district, Assam.
A member of the Mising community, one of Assam’s largest tribal groups, Kutum has grown up farming along the floodplains shaped by the Brahmaputra. For generations, his community has cultivated diverse crops adapted to shifting soils, erratic rainfall and seasonal floods. But something fundamental is changing, he said.
“There was a time when you could smell the harvest before you saw it.”
Across many parts of Assam, the arrival of harvest season once came with a soft, sweet fragrance drifting across the fields. The scent came from joha rice, an indigenous aromatic variety known for its fine grains, delicate texture and distinct flavour. Recognising its uniqueness, joha rice was granted a Geographical Indication (GI) tag in 2017.
Today, that fragrance is fading.
Crop Diversity Block at Manihori Integrated Farm in Agoratoli village, Assam. Photo Credit: Monuhar Pegu.
A Living Memory of Aroma
In Agoratoli village, near the eastern range of Kaziranga National Park, 72-year-old Bohagi Pegu continues to cultivate traditional crops using methods passed down through generations.
“The floral aroma of joha rice and the taste of our native vegetables defined our seasons,” she said. “We never used chemicals. The taste came from the soil.”
She named several varieties of rice she still grows – kola joha, keteki joha, bhabuli joha, and kon joha – each with its own fragrance, grain type and growing conditions. Alongside these are traditional vegetables like scented sponge gourd (joha bhul) and ash gourd, as well as pulses such as black gram........