Originally reported and written in April 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content.

After giving birth to her daughter in 2014, Chandana Gade wanted to raise her by feeding her rice and organic green leafy vegetables. But while living in the city, she doubted the vegetables available in the market.

“At the same time, we came across news reports of farmers using contaminated drainage water to grow leafy vegetables, and use chemical fertilisers and pesticides as well. These days, children suffer from a number of diseases at a young age because of the kind of food they eat. We did not want to serve toxic food to our daughter,” the 36-year-old Hyderabad resident tells The Better India.

Born to a farmer family in the Khamman district of Telangana, she grew up eating homegrown vegetables and wished the same for her daughter. So, she started looking for native varieties of seeds to cultivate at home.

While doing so, Chandana and her husband Naveen Gade visited numerous local and online markets, only to find that there is a lack of a proper dedicated market for desi (indigenous) seeds.

“We could only find hybrid seeds, which are not good for health. We found some native seeds on e-commerce websites but their quality was not good,” Naveen, a software engineer, tells The Better India.

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