Our work on conservation of traditional rice varieties was covered by Thomas Reuter’s foundation, in its article titled Battling century’s worst drought, India’s farmers revive traditional grains.
The excerpt mentioning CIKS:
The Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems (CIKS), for example, has revived dozens of traditional rice varieties that are resistant to pests and disease, capable of dealing with floods and drought, and that have valuable medicinal properties.
“Particularly for coastal regions such as this, you need varieties that can handle the higher salinity of the soil and groundwater, and are resistant to drought,” said Subhashini Sridhar at CIKS in neighbouring Nagapattinam district.
“You need a large and diverse genetic pool to preserve these qualities,” she said, citing the example of the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which hit Nagapattinam hard.
Afterward, only some traditional varieties could be successfully grown because salinity in the soil and groundwater was higher than normal.