The insitu biodiversity conservation at farm level as set asides through buffer habitat management would maintain naturally occurring and evolving populations of agriculturally useful species within their natural environment. Innovative approaches like bio-banking as adaptive participatory approach at farm and/or community level needed for in-situ conservation. In this direction institutional role is greatest to achieve the capacity building of the community at farm level for co-evolution and induce the network reciprocity to enhance the conservation attitude . Biodiversity and ecological functions are inextricably linked to economic, cultural and social aspects of the stakeholders. Biodiversity spread across the ecosystem is unique and its integrity is governed by the interactions with the immediate exploitative elements of the system. Agro-bio- diversity has been under various scales of studies to ad- dress the issues related to fast disappearance of the economic traditional varieties/wild relatives/land races.
Agro-ecology presents complex of issues in this direction due to shifting paradigms and major dependency on modern agricultural practices resulting in progressive loss of genetic resources, land degradation and erosion of below ground biodiversity. Further, it aggravates the vulnerability of agricultural production systems to pest and disease risks,vertical rack system environmental stability eventually contributing for declining food security. Thus, conservation and sustainable utilization of the agro-biodiversity at local to regional scale has become agenda for discussion at national to international level. Bio-banking can be an appropriate in-situ conservation mechanism that assists in conserving one or more diverse populations of species in a site. Farm level approach in a landscape will provide an ideal situation to address the conservation of genetic resource pools of micro- and macro-scale. The sites selected for bio-banking process must have specific evolution a processes hence serving as on open laboratory permitting continued evolution and conservation of the component species.
The size of the conservation site in a landscape is determined by elements like 1) current threats to natural resources, genetic variants and nature of threats; 2) how does species reproduce ; and 3) ability of select species to maintain its biological sustainability. Farm specific indigenous knowledge and criteria for conservation need to be integrated in bio-banking process as participatory approach. Currently, there is need for effective implementation of policy framework addressing economic incentives for conservation of agro-biodiversity.Current system of subsidies on various agricultural inputs to enhance the agricultural productivity has been a drawback as it accelerate the depletion of inherent ecosystem services of farm. It complicates the proposition of dual objective of increased productivity and conservation of ecosystem services. However, a precise incentive scheme, which is suitable to expand biological and agronomic practices that is specific to agro-systems and regions will help make right decision at the farm level in terms of inputs use efficiency and resource protection. It calls for de-signing a suitable framework at farm scale to develop conservation agricultural activities. It requires substantial knowledge on technologies, robust database on farm matrices and their interactive state in a landscape for precise decision-making process. Moreover, it requires application of sustainability indices to identify the farm, which comply with the conservation activities. It is useful to rationalize the farm scale analysis of agro- biodiversity with broader aim to analyze data to identify hot spots of agro-biodiversity, habitat fragmentation implications and develop adaptive community based participatory conservation activities specific to cluster farms and/or specific farm.
Sustainable agricultural practices must address the conservation of biodiversity, improved ecological functions, social acceptability, self-reliance, equity, improved quality of life and economic productivity of crops and live- stock. Sustainability of agriculture is viewed critically from the point of food and ecological security at the regional scale. Conceptually, effective sustainable agriculture practices must be analyzed through three basic elements; 1) maintenance of environmental quality; 2) synergistic interaction of plant and animal productivity; and 3) social acceptability with economic benefits. It is suggestive that agricultural sustainability should be addressed from the perspective of maintenance of ecological integrity, social acceptability and economic viability . These factors in their interactive state in farm level provide critical insight on the indicators and conservation prospects.