New Delhi, Mar 10 (IANS): The government has said that indigenous varieties of rice are being promoted through several programmes.

According to the government, 574 such varieties of rice have been propagated and tested at more than 10,000 farmers' fields, involving state agricultural universities, KVKs and NGOs through a project entitled "Mainstreaming Agricultural biodiversity conservation and utilization of the agriculture sector to ensure ecosystem services and reduce vulnerability".

The information was given in a written reply by Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar in Lok Sabha on Tuesday.

The Minister informed the House that nutritional profiling of 300 selected rice varieties has been done for market linkage and better price to the farmers.

Farmers are also being trained on conservation, improvement and use of traditional/indigenous varieties through participatory variety selection, he added.

Further, for access to seeds of these indigenous varieties, community seed banks have been established at community level involving KVKs and Self Help Groups in remote and tribal areas of the country and a total of 26 community seed banks conserving over 4000 native landraces and farmers' varieties of different food crops including rice have been strengthened and established, as per the information given by the Minister in the written reply.