Concept and rationale of evolutionary plant breeding and its status in Nepal

Nepalese farmers are increasingly losing their own saved seeds. There have been impacts of weather variability, often modern crop varieties are not available to suit these changing conditions. Farmers are looking for crop varieties that can better adapt to these changing conditions, and seeds of which can be saved for the next season planting. This paper focuses on Evolutionary Plant Breeding (EPB), which creates and maintains a high degree of genetic diversity (i.e. polymorphic population). EPB is a choice for breeders and farmers for accelerating the development of climate-resilient and sustainably high-performance crop varieties.