 The northern part of West Bengal is endowed with diverse natural resources like rivers, forest, economic plant resources, agro-ecosystem, biodiversity, etc., with extremely responsive rural communities.It comprises old alluvial, terai and hill zones distributed in eight northern districts of West Bengal (Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong, Malda, Dakshin Dinajpur and Uttar Dinajpur).The economy of this part of West Bengal is predominantly agrarian, and agriculture is characterized by low productivity and subsistence farming with a limited number of crops due to inherent soil-climatic and agro-ecological conditions.