An-Najah Staff

 This study has been conducted  in six villages of the Nablus District, to understand their current seed status, especially traditional varieties, the processes by which Palestinian farmers’ communities have maintained their biodiversity of seeds, and by which farmers can be encouraged to revive systems of varietal maintenance, and hence ensure food crops security at household and community levels. The results indicate that over the last few decades, there has been a considerable decline in the number of local crop varieties cultivated in the Nablus District partially due to rapid changes brought about in agricultural technology, including the introduction of new or improved varieties. This trend has resulted in genetic erosion and disappearance of eco-geographically adapted crop cultivars, decrease in farmers’ choice of traditional varieties, and simultaneously endangering farmers’  traditional knowledge of seed selection, treatment and storage. The results, however, showed that traditional crop varieties are still prevailing in the semi-arid agriculture in the area under study, with these varieties being more diverse under rain-fed agriculture (81 %) than under irrigated agriculture (71 %). The relative importance index (RII) estimated based on numbers of farmers, area of the cultivated crop, and total area of different crop varieties, was used in this study as an indicator of the relative importance of each of the cultivated crops in a certain area. It has been possible by using this method to compare between crop varieties cultivated in one village or a group of villages. Based on their RIIs, the following varieties were shown to be the most important of all crop varieties in the study area: wheat (haytieh samra), common vetch (traditional variety), barely (traditional variety), wheat (Anbar, an improved variety), wheat (haytieh safra), and traditional varieties of lentil vetch, chickpea, broad beans, Egyptian cucumber, and lentils. Varieties however, assume different RII values from one village to the other probably due to differences in rainfall, availability of water for irrigation, and distance from markets. Ecologically sound agricultural practices are still practiced among the majority of farmers (80%), including the use of animal manure for field fertilization, and that the vast majority of the farmers understands the importance of traditional varieties conservation, and was willing to contribute to that end. The results also show that there is a real need for farmers to have access to seeds of traditional varieties. In fact more than 90% of the study population expressed interest in procuring seeds of traditional varieties from a certified source, and express their willingness to revive and restore lost local varieties to replace improved or new varieties. The current survey results show that there is a great demand for the revival of traditional varieties in the Palestinian areas under semi-arid agriculture, and through financial support from Small Grant Program / Global Environmental Facility (SGP/GEF), community effort and BERC involvement, a seed conservation system namely a Community Seed Bank is being established at Til Village in the Nablus district. The Community Seed Bank functions as a facility and center for seed requirements of farmers, and enhances the tradition of nurturing diversity through: access to seeds of farmers’ choice; farmers’ capacity building in producing desired seed of specific crop cultivars; providing strategic seed reserve in drought years; production of good quality seed; ensuring farmers’ seed security at household level; on-farm germplasm conservation through utilization; farmer training in the principals of seed production; seed selection, treatment and storage; and exchange of information, innovations and technologies between and among farmers, extension agents and researcher