West Bengal is known as rice bowl of our country. Its cultivation is in the life of Bengalis since time immemorial. The crop is grown in highly assorted agro-climatic situations from hilly and terai soils to red lateritic and even in coastal saline soils.  These diverse climatic and edaphic conditions persuaded great diversity to rice genome to adapt the class of geographic conditions. Folk rice have long been highly regarded in Indian society not only because some of their excellent quality but also because they had been considered auspicious. Folk rice is reservoir of many biotic and abiotic stress tolerance traits. The primary benefit derived from folk rice by breeders has been the introduction into commercial variety of genes to overcome stresses: examples include resistance to pests and pathogens, drought tolerance, cold tolerance, etc.  Immense numbers of folk rice were grown in different districts of West Bengal. These different ecotypes were categorized into three broad groups viz., Aus, Aman and Boro. These land races are primarily grown in Aus and Aman seasons. With the popularization of semi dwarf high yielding cultivars, we started losing the wealth of rice land races.  With the disappearance of thousands of rice landraces, an erosion of folk knowledge concerning to the properties of specific varieties, many traditional agricultural systems is in the step of extinction. So, documentation, characterization and conservation are an utmost need to avoid the drift of gene pools now a day. Thus, we can save our culture as well as agricultural systems through conserving the diversity of folk rice in West Bengal.

Key words: Rice, Land race, High Yielding Variety, Traditional agricultural systems, Conservation