Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Memorial Lecture: II

North-East and South-West areas was lost after the Pleistocene glaciation.
According to Hora (1944, 1948, 1949, 1950), there is also resemblance in fish fauna
of these two disjunct areas. He advanced Satpura Hypothesis which envisaged
movement of Assam fauna through Satpura System to Western Ghats. Botanists
supported this as well. However, the other school of thought believes that
resemblance in flora and fauna in the two disjunct areas is the result of convergent
evolution. Whatever be the explanation, the fact remains that the NE and SE floras
and faunas have some resemblance. Several species of mammals and birds
endemic to Himalaya have been listed by MacKinnon and MacKinnon (1986).
Centres of Diversity
11
All crop plants and domesticated animals can be traced to their wild ancestors
and other relatives. Former have arisen as a result of both inadvertent and
deliberate selection by humanbeing. In fact, the greater the transformation of there
taxa to suite the needs of humanbeing, the greater is their degree of dependence on
humanbeing. The crop plant genetic resources of the world can be more or less
assigned to specific centres of diversity identified by Vavilov (1951) on the basis of
varietal diversity, homologous variation, endemism, dominanat allele frequencies
and disease resistance (see also Khoshoo, 1991).
The centres are located in different continents and India is one of the important
centres of diversity having contributed 167 species of plants whose origin and
diversity is in this country (Khoshoo 1991). Within India there are eight subscentres
namely Western Himalaya, Eastern Himalaya, North Eastern Region, Gangetic
Plains, Indus Plains, Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats and Andaman and Nicobar
(Arora and Nayar,1984). The first three of these falls in the Himalayan belt and are
shown in Fig.7. The Western Himalaya has contributed species of the genera of
Pyrus, Prunus, Sorbus, Rubus, Ribes , Hordeum, Elymus, Eremopyrum, Avena,
Aegilops, Allium Lepidium, Carcum, Linum, Cicer and Cucumis.
Fig. 7 Three subcentres of plant diversity in the Himalaya source: Arora & Nayar,
1984.
The Eastern Himalaya have been the source of species of genera Pyrus, Prunus,
Sorbus, Rubus, Ribes, Hordeum.
The NorthEastern Region has contributed species of genera like: Citrus, Musa,
Magnifera, Docynia, Elafocarpus, Myrica, Morus, Vitis. Coix, Digitaria , Oryza, Vigna,
Canavalia, Cucumis, Solanum, brassicae, Corchorus, Piper, Amomum, Alpinia,
Curcuma, Zingiber, Saccharum and Oryza.
From the foregoing account, it is clear that Himalayan region has been the
source of several species of cereals, pulses, fruits, oil yielding plants, spices, and
tuberous vegetables and sugar yielding plants and their wild relatives (Appendix I).
26