Preservation of viable seeds from the time of collection until they are required for sowing is an important post-harvesting process. The quality of the seeds are greatly affected by the conditions in which they are stored. Poor quality seeds can result in poor agricultural output that will affect the farmers as well as society. Conservation of seeds is important because most of the indigenous seeds are likely to be extinct due to exploitation of hybrid and high-yielding varieties by large seed companies. These cannot be saved from season to season and the companies have applied patents on these products. Community-based seed banks and the farmers practicing conservation of indigenous seed varieties are the present practitioners of storing seeds, using traditional methods. However, the traditional storage methods that are being practiced by the farmers are not appropriate for the long storage period. Storage using such methods lead to a drop in the germination percentage of the seeds from 60 per cent to 50 per cent after a time period of two seasons. The reasons behind these are increased seed respiration rate, fungal growth and attacks by insects and rats.

The present study is to evaluate the performance of the existing seed storage methods conducted by the farmers, and design and develop a low-cost seed conservatory for marginal scale farmers and community level seed banks.