In Gurez, a high-altitude Himalayan valley 80 miles from Srinagar and cut off each winter when snow closes the 3,600-metre Razdan Pass, families have stored potatoes in underground pits called khraws for generations. The pits — lined with straw, sealed against temperatures below -20C — kept five quintals (500kg) of potatoes, turnips and cabbages through months of isolation. Now, fewer families maintain them. The practice is dying, and with it, an unbanked library of locally adapted potato genetics. Hajra Begum, 40, still uses the pits in Chorwan village. She learned from her mother how to distinguish potatoes that store well from those that rot or sprout — embodied knowledge with no written record. She is teaching her daughter but doubts the skill will survive another generation. Abdul Jabbar Mapnoo, 70, remembers when every house had two or three khraws. Now most families buy from the market or accept government-subsidised supplies. The genetic stakes are concrete. Potatoes account for about 45% of Gurez's cultivated area, according to a 2019 study by ICAR-NBPGR, the Indian government body responsible for crop diversity. Yet the valley's potato varieties have never been systematically documented. Dr Sheikh M Sultan, a senior scientist at ICAR-NBPGR's Srinagar station, returned to Gurez and could barely locate samples of varieties he had previously encountered. "The loss of genetic diversity is tremendous," he says. These indigenous varieties may carry tolerance to cold and resistance to pests and diseases — traits of rising value as climate breakdown accelerates. Climate change is compounding the pressure. Farmers report drier springs, reduced snowfall, and water shortages affecting potato production. Mapnoo remembers winters when six feet of snow covered the valley in January. That snow is diminishing, and so is the incentive to grow potatoes when market supply now reaches the valley on improved roads. The Kishanganga hydroelectric project has further squeezed cultivable land, with acquisition and submergence affecting Badwan, a village known for its potatoes. The Dard-Shin people who maintain these practices are an Indigenous community speaking Shina, culturally distinct from Kashmiri, with ties across the Line of Control into Gilgit-Baltistan. Their agricultural knowledge is oral and embodied — passed hand to hand at harvest, not recorded in databases. When families stop producing their own seed and switch to commercial varieties, Sultan warns, "the loss can be irreparable." Research institutions have prioritised introduced varieties over indigenous crops whose characteristics remain poorly understood. Potential preservation routes exist but remain theoretical. Geographical indications — the UN FAO designation similar to France's appellation d'origine contrôlée — could raise market value and recognition, as has happened with Pampore saffron in Kashmir. The FAO's Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems programme offers another framework. But recognition requires documentation, and documentation requires urgency that institutions have not yet demonstrated. The varieties must be identified while they are still being cultivated, alongside the farmers' knowledge of selection, storage and replanting. The pattern here is familiar and global: road access and market integration deliver immediate convenience while silently liquidating genetic and cultural assets that took centuries to develop. Each family that abandons its khraw removes one node from a distributed, living seed bank. The potatoes Begum lowers into her pit this winter are not just food — they are ungathered data, unsequenced genomes, and untested climate-adaptation traits that may vanish before anyone records what they contain.
