Not interested in agriculture initially, Syed Ghani Khan (38) had plans to study commerce and work in Mysore, but due to family problems he could not continue his studies and had to get involved in farming. At present, he is very popular and a well-known farmer for protection and conservation of paddy and mango varieties in South India. He is conserving more than 900 paddy varieties and 116 mango trees including exotic varieties such as having taste like sweet lime & cumin flavour and fruits in shape of fish at his biodiversity rich farms known as ‘BadaaBaagh’.He also owns a repository where he has conserved more than 1200 indigenous & improved crop varieties.

The Mosambi mango variety conserved by him hassweet lime flavoured, slightly acidic firm pulp, yellowish green coloured peel at maturity with delicious taste in addition to its excellent keeping quality.The Seb mango variety resembles apple in terms of color and shape, with unique taste and good keeping quality.

NIF- India facilitated the on-site evaluation of the variety by the scientists of ICAR- Indian Institute of Horticulture Research, Bangalore.The result revealed that the average fruit weight of Seb mango is 120 g, with greenish yellow peel colour and orange pulp colour having moderate TSS (13 ËšB). It is unique variety having good flavour. For Mosambi Mango it was found that the fruit shape is oblong, average weight is about 159.79 g. It is very delicious to taste, medium in pulp percentage (58.63 %) and moderate TSS (13.4 ËšB). The peel colour is yellowish green and with pale yellow pulp. Fruits are having sweet lime like flavor with slightly acidic firm pulp and excellent keeping quality.

For his outstanding work, he has been conferred with various awards includingthe ‘Plant Genome Saviour Farmer Recognition’ award by the PPV & FR Authority in 2012. “Krishi Jeeva Viavidya” honoured in 2010 and “Krishi Pandit” award in 2008were awarded by the Government of Karnataka.Many farmers have collected scionfrom the trees for grafting and the Department of Horticulture, Govt. of Karnataka prepared 250 grafts of the varieties and distributed to the farmers of the Karnataka during 2014-15.