India has a position in between developing and industrial countries. It is developed among the former, but developing among the latter. It is rich in biodiversity as relevant both to the health of biosphere in general and to agriculture, animal husbandry, fisheries, forestry and pharmaceutical industry in particular.
It is backed by equally rich cultural diversity and indigenous systems of medicine, and knowledge and wisdom of indigenous people, and is supported by a reasonably strong scientific and technological base. Biodiversity is indeed one of India’s important strengths and is the bedrock of all bioindustrial development in the unusually large rural sector (5, 76,000 villages with 76 per cent of the country’s population) of the country. However, the real value of biodiversity lies in the information that is encoded in the genes and molecules.
India has over 1, 08,276 species of bacteria, fungi, plants and animals already identified and described. Out of these over 84 percent species constitute fungi (21.2 per cent), flowering plants (13.5 per cent) and insects (49.3 per cent). In terms of the number of species, the insects alone constitute nearly half of the biodiversity in India.
Based on the data on the already described species, India is tenth among the plant-rich countries of the world, fourth among the Asian countries, eleventh as far as number of endemic species of higher vertebrates (amphibia, birds and animals), and tenth in the world as fas as richness in mammals is concerned.
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Out of the 25 ‘hotspots’ identified in the world, India has two: these are Eastern Himalaya and Western Ghats. The two areas contain 5332 endemic species of higher plants (3500 plus 1600 species, respectively), mammals, reptiles, amphibia and butterflies.
In addition, the country is a very important Valvilovian Centre of Diversity and Origin of over 167 important cultivated plant species and some domesticated animals.
To name a few, the following crops arose in India and spread throughout the world: rice, sugarcane, Asiatic vignas, jute, mango, citrus, banana, several species of millets, species, medicinal, aromatics and ornamentals, etc. India ranks sixth among the centres of diversity and origin as far as agri- biodiversity is concerned.