Gender roles in Seed storage and management

Abstract

Gender involvement in seed production, processing, packaging and storage was studied in five villages comprising two districts of coastal Orissa. Seed being the most vital input both men and women played a crucial role in seed production and management. However role of women was more spectacular in activities like harvesting, cleaning and grading, packing and storage whereas men play important role in threshing and seed treatment. Survey results indicated that though chemical treatment of grains and seeds were common but women preferred to store seeds with non chemical indigenous methods like mixing leaves of Vitex negundo, Azadirachta indica, Lantana camara and inert materials like cow dung ash, charcoal, dried cow dung etc. were reported to be used in the locality for storing green gram (Vigna mungo) and arhar (Cajanas cajan) seeds. The collected ITKs were validated using experiments for comparing loss of viability of seeds treated in indigenous methods, recommended chemical and untreated control after pretreatment and storing in a clean and ventilated seed storage place. Results revealed that green gram seeds treated with leaves of Vitex negundo and cow dung ash had 9.3% less loss in germination than the recommended method (Treated with thiram @ 3 gm per Kg of seed). In Red gram (Cajanas cajan) it was found that treatment of seeds with red earth and mustard oil was very effective. The loss in germination was 19% and 20.9 % less than the untreated control respectively. In all above cases germination percentage of seeds treated with ITKs were similar to chemical treatment. So farm women can reliably use ITKs for storage of green gram and arhar seeds