Characterisation of Katarni rice for its Geographical Indication of Bihar India

Katarni Rice is the most prevalent, ceremonial and finest quality scented rice of Bihar. It is famous for its aromatic flavour, palatability and Chura (beaten rice) making qualities of Geographical area of production of Katarni Rice includes districts of Munger, Banka and South Bhagalpur of Zone IIIAof Bihar. The unique features of Katarni rice are developed only when it is grown in its territory areas. It has an immense scope of trading in local as well as export market. But, the available Katarni rice is poor yielder (25-30 t/ha) and farmers are tending towards the cultivation of non-aromatic high yielding rice varieties. Hence, in order to save this landrace from extinction and promote and protect the interest of Katarni growers, attempts were made to get its geographical indication (GI). With the objective of providing an exclusive right to the farmers for growing this premium quality rice and getting a remunerative price through its marketing, an application for getting the tag of geographical indication was submitted by a Katarni growers' association. Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour as a technical facilitator for this application, served to characterize and document this rice landrace on the basis of morphological, biochemical and genetical traits. The present study deals with purification, documentation, and characterization of Katarni rice which helped in getting the GI tag in 2018 from the office of Intellectual Properties Rights, New Delhi, India