On-farm conservation of useful crops and varieties is very important as these crops and their cropping systems play a vital role in fulfilling the food, nutritional and other requirements of those living in marginal environments. In the face of changing climatic conditions, these crops and varieties, and their associated traditional knowledge, could play a vital role in enhancing resilience among rural communities and enabling them to adapt to climate change (Bhag Mal, Padulosi and Bala Ravi, 2010.). Due to rapid changes happening in the
socio-economic sphere of traditional farming systems and their practitioners, traditional community-based agro-biodiversity management practices have been disappearing at an alarming rate in the last three decades. The M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) is a non-profit research foundation that, inter alia, is facilitating community-based participatory research in India among the Tribal communities in the Kolli Hills, Tamil Nadu, and the Koraput region in Orissa. MSSRF is attempting to revive the on-farm conservation tradition for millets in
the Kolli Hills and for landraces of rice in Koraput, with the involvement of Tribal communities (Gruère, Nagarajan and King, 2009; Anil Kumar et al., 2010).