Before the first rays of dawn pierce the horizon over the quiet village of Karmohana in Nepal’s southwestern district of Banke, Naresh Chidimar is already awake. Following a routine passed down through generations of farming families, he yokes his buffaloes, hoists a heavy wooden plough onto his shoulder, and makes his way through the dim light toward his fields. The morning air is cool as he begins the grueling labor of turning the soil, working continuously until the sun rises high enough to signal a brief respite.
Taking a short break on a raised dirt field bund after finishing roughly half a plot of land, he reaches first for a container of water to quench his deep thirst. When questioned about the specific crop he is preparing to cultivate this season, the 35-year-old farmer answers without a moment of hesitation that he is planting Radha-4 variety of rice.
However, when asked why he chooses not to grow a fine, highly aromatic variety like Radha-4, a look of genuine surprise crosses his face. Chidimar admits that despite spending his entire life working the land, he has never even seen authentic Basmati rice growing, nor does he know what it looks or tastes like.
This simple admission from a lifelong farmer reveals a sobering and deeply concerning reality that extends across the vast plains of Tarai region. Traditional, indigenous aromatic rice varieties are quietly but rapidly disappearing from the agricultural landscape, transforming from vibrant seasonal crops into distant memories.
The dramatic decline of Basmati and other historic landraces, such as the legendary Kalanamak, cannot be attributed to a simple lack of seeds or a sudden change in climate alone. Instead, the shift is driven by harsh, unforgiving economic realities that dictate the daily survival of smallholder farmers. While authentic Basmati is celebrated globally for its exquisite aroma, slender grain texture, and premium market value, it yields significantly less grain per hectare compared to modern, coarse varieties.
For small-holder agriculturalists operating on minimal landholdings, choosing to cultivate a low-yield variety is a financial gamble they simply cannot afford. For these communities, the immediate priority remains household food security. High-yielding coarse varieties like Radha-4 continue to dominate the fields because they reliably provide enough total volume of grain to sustain families through the entire year, shielding them from the threat of hunger.
This crisis of agricultural heritage extends far beyond the borders of Banke, mirroring a broader ecological and cultural loss affecting both the lowlands of the Tarai and the steep terrace farms of Nepal’s hill regions. Despite the scale of the problem, the critical question of who carries the responsibility for protecting and conserving these endangered indigenous crops remains largely unanswered, with local governments showing remarkably little interest in creating localized preservation frameworks.
The weight of this institutional neglect is felt heavily by farmers like Abdul Rashid Bagwan, a resident of Banjare village, who has grown entirely disillusioned with the grandiose political promises of an imminent agricultural revolution regularly delivered by elected leaders. Standing at the edge of his muddy plot during the grueling transplanting season, Bagwan points out over his land and laments that Kalanamak has already effectively vanished from the local ecosystem to the point where finding viable seeds has become an impossible task. He fears that Basmati and another traditional aromatic variety, Shyamjira, are rapidly accelerating down the exact same path of extinction.
There was a time when these indigenous aromatic rice varieties swayed in abundance across the fertile Tarai plains, defining the very identity of the region. Their disappearance is not merely a loss for agricultural statistics; it represents a profound erosion of culinary culture and communal history. Elders in the villages frequently recall an era when cooking a pot of traditional rice would fill an entire neighborhood with a rich, unmistakable fragrance.
The texture of varieties like Kalanamak was exceptionally soft, and the taste was so distinctive that farmers still claim that once a person has tasted authentic Kalanamak, all other modern rice varieties seem utterly bland by comparison. This legendary fragrance was not confined solely to the kitchen, as the scent would drift across the open landscape for long distances when the crops ripened in the autumn sun. Today, these treasured grains are cooked only occasionally during major cultural festivals in a small handful of households. In the past, families would proudly welcome honored guests by serving Kalanamak rice as a profound symbol of prestige, hospitality, and mutual respect, a social tradition that is fading alongside the crop itself.
As these varieties face extinction in open fields, the battle to save them has shifted to the sterile environments of scientific laboratories and gene banks, where samples of endangered rice can be cryogenically preserved for anywhere between 10 and 100 years. Researchers are currently utilizing these stored genetic resources to develop modified strains by crossbreeding indigenous varieties with modern rice lines, hoping to inject high disease resistance and sturdier stalks into the ancient plants. Yet, the timeline for scientific salvation offers little immediate comfort to struggling farmers.
Agricultural scientists openly admit that developing a stable, viable crossbred variety is a slow, meticulous process that typically takes between 10 to 12 years, with absolutely no guarantee of ultimate success. A specialized research initiative dedicated solely to reviving Kalanamak is projected to take at least another five years just to finalize testing. Furthermore, experts acknowledge that traditional aromatic varieties are naturally highly susceptible to localized plant diseases and lodging—a condition where the heavy top of the grain stalk falls over in high winds—making the un-modified crop increasingly unattractive to modern farmers who require predictable returns.
The structural crisis is further compounded by national agricultural policies that critics argue have long neglected indigenous landraces. While the Ministry of Agriculture provides substantial financial subsidies, subsidized fertilizers, and technical support to farmers who choose to cultivate modern improved and imported hybrid rice varieties, those who desperately attempt to stick with traditional landraces are largely excluded from state assistance.
This policy gap leaves farmers feeling abandoned by the state. In the village of Ramuwapur, a seasoned farmer named Munnu Barma echoes these frustrations, explaining that many of his peers abandoned Basmati cultivation not because they wanted to lose their heritage, but because the government consistently failed to provide the baseline agricultural infrastructure—such as reliable year-round irrigation systems, dependable fertilizer supply chains, and high-quality certified seeds—needed to sustain its fragile production requirements.
In response to this growing emergency, international organizations have stepped in to collaborate with domestic agencies. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), working alongside the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), has initiated a breeding project aimed at producing seeds for an improved, shorter-statured iteration of Kalanamak designed to resist lodging. However, agricultural administrators urge caution regarding these scientific interventions. Sagar Dhakal, the Provincial Programme Manager of the High-Value Agriculture Commodities Promotion Programme under the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Environment in Bhairahawa, explicitly notes that these newly engineered, shorter-statured varieties are fundamentally distinct from the historic, traditional aromatic Kalanamak or the pure indigenous Basmati lines. Dhakal admits that while limited conservation efforts are actively underway, the scale remains minimal, and the newly developed NARC seeds have yet to successfully transition from experimental research stations into the actual hands and fields of everyday Nepali farmers.
While these traditional crops are quietly vanishing from the very soil that birthed them, they have paradoxically become the subject of high-stakes international legal warfare and intellectual property disputes. Rice is deeply woven into the fabric of human civilization across the Asian continent, where more than 60 percent of the global population relies on it as their primary staple food. Scientifically classified as Oryza Sativa, the grain has been meticulously cultivated for thousands of years, with nearly 90 percent of the world's total rice supply produced and consumed within Asia. Nepal’s immediate geopolitical neighbors, India and China, together command roughly half of this massive global production. Because of this immense economic and cultural footprint, authentic indigenous Basmati has become a highly contested commodity on the world stage, sparking intense legal battles over ownership and regional identity.
The modern history of these international legal conflicts dates back to 1997, when a United States-based agricultural biotechnology firm named RiceTec sought to claim legal ownership over various Basmati rice lines and specific breeding methods. Operating out of Texas, the private corporation successfully secured several US patents covering hybrid varieties that closely mimicked the traditional characteristics of grains cultivated for centuries across South Asian nations, including Nepal, India, and Pakistan. The aggressive corporate move immediately triggered widespread international outrage and condemnation, particularly from the government of India, which fiercely challenged the validity of the patents in international courts, arguing that the American company’s actions constituted a flagrant act of biopiracy against a traditional, communal South Asian crop. Following a protracted legal battle and intense global scrutiny, the majority of RiceTec’s sweeping patent claims were ultimately withdrawn or struck down, preventing the private entity from establishing an exclusive commercial monopoly over the name and genetics of Basmati.
In recent years, the geopolitical battlefield over the grain has shifted directly to the bureaucratic halls of the European Union, where the government of Nepal has formally asserted its historic rights over the aromatic rice. The conflict escalated dramatically after India submitted an official application to the European Union seeking to register Basmati as its own exclusive Geographical Indication (GI) product. Recognizing that an exclusive Indian GI tag would legally bar Nepali farmers from marketing their own native crops as Basmati in lucrative European markets, the government of Nepal mobilized a formal opposition in Dec 2020. This decisive counter-action followed a high-level joint meeting of secretaries from Nepal’s then Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development alongside the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, and Supplies, where leaders unanimously determined that the country must aggressively contest the unilateral Indian application to protect domestic agricultural interests.
To build a robust, legally binding counterclaim, the Nepali state worked through the specialized frameworks of NARC and the National Agriculture Genetic Resources Centre, widely known as the National Gene Bank, located in Khumaltar. Experts and historians painstakingly compiled a wealth of indisputable historical, cultural, and scientific evidence to present before the European Union’s reviewing bodies. The official evidence submitted by Nepal definitively demonstrates that Basmati rice has been actively cultivated since ancient times within its territory, particularly throughout the fertile Tarai plains and the Inner Madhesh valleys, holding immense cultural, religious, and historical significance within the tapestry of Nepali society. From a purely scientific standpoint, the state highlighted the extensive catalog of the National Gene Bank, which successfully houses and conserves a wide array of distinct indigenous Basmati landraces, including rare and biologically unique variations such as Black Basmati and Red Basmati.
Furthermore, Nepal’s legal defense rigorously argued that more than 130 distinct varieties of indigenous Basmati have been documented and cultivated across more than 60 of the nation’s 77 districts. The documentation also highlighted that since the early 1960s, Nepal’s national agricultural research institutions and state-backed breeding initiatives have formally registered, developed, and conserved multiple Basmati lines through official state channels. Unlike a patent, which legally protects a brand-new scientific invention or technological process, a Geographical Indication serves to legally recognize the specific geographical origin, environmental conditions, and traditional reputation that give a product its unique characteristics. With both Nepal and Pakistan having filed formal, detailed objections to India’s claim of absolute exclusivity, the complex geopolitical matter remains under active consideration by the European Union. Nepal firmly maintains that Basmati is the collective, shared heritage of the entire South Asian subcontinent, insisting that the fundamental rights, history, and economic interests of Nepali farmers must be fully recognized and legally protected under any final international trademark framework.
Yet, as international lawyers debate the technical nuances of Geographical Indications in Brussels, the immediate reality for the men and women working the soil of western Nepal remains unchanged. The grand international disputes offer no remedy for the empty seed bags in Banjare village or the lack of irrigation canals in Ramuwapur. For farmers like Naresh Chidimar, the daily struggle is entirely local, measured not in intellectual property rights, but in the weight of the harvest and the ability to feed a family. As the ancient, fragrant varieties are slowly locked away in cold storage gene banks to await a distant scientific resurrection, the vibrant agricultural heritage of the Tarai plains continues to quietly slip away, leaving a legacy of unforgettable aromas trapped in the memories of a fading generation.
