DUS Characters in Tropical Tuber Crops, Farmers Friendly Tools for Food, Nutrition and Livelihood Security

Abstract

The tropical tuber crops viz. cassava, sweet potato, taro and elephant foot yam are most important as source of food, nutrition and livelihood for more than 500 million people across the globe. The DUS criteria serve as a guideline to protect breeders and farmers interests in many agri horticultural crops. To develop DUS standards, tropical tuber crops are equally important like other food and vegetative crops. Some of these are GI crops of our country. The potential of tropical tuber crops as cash crop and to meet required food and nutrition demands especially in fragile zones have been revalidated in recent years. Varieties of commercial, food, ethnic and medicinal importance of these important tuber crops species need to be characterized or rather to be DUS tested to cater post PPVFRA, 2001 IPR regimes. DUS testing criteria and varietal gene bank have been established for cassava, sweet potato, taro and elephant foot yam. DUS testing also initiated in yam bean and greater yam. Among these, taro and elephant foot yam with higher yield (20-50 t/ha) growing well with minimum inputs in diverse agro conditions can curb the rising food and nutrition insecurity with changing climate. On the other hand, greater yam is the common vegetable and source of herbal medicine in tribal dominated districts of Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Odisha. The primary characters of taro and elephant foot yam are discussed in detail to satisfy DUS standards not only to facilitate livelihood of farmers but also to comply trade security of GI crop species of our country.