Before the Green Revolution, Punjab grew a large number of local wheat, rice, cotton, maize, millet and pulse varieties, selected over generations for particular soils and particular uses.
Almost all were replaced within about fifteen years by a small number of improved varieties, because the improved ones yielded more with fertiliser and were what was procured.
What survives is in gene banks: the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, the Punjab Agricultural University collections, and international collections.
Some are held by farmers. Basmati landraces, desi cotton, and traditional rice varieties are grown in small quantities by individuals and by seed-saving networks.
The loss matters practically rather than sentimentally: a genetically narrow crop is vulnerable to a disease that a diverse one is not, and Punjab's wheat is very narrow.
The varieties a Punjab village grew in 1950 are recorded, if at all, in a settlement report or an agricultural department bulletin, and the seed itself is in a freezer or gone.
The wheat and rice varieties Punjab grew before 1965 are in the national gene bank and in the international collections and are in no field.
Basmati is the exception. The traditional long grain varieties survived because a market paid for them, which is the only mechanism that has preserved anything.
The desi cotton, the coarse millets, the pulses and the local vegetable varieties went without being recorded. What a Punjab village grew in 1950 is not written down anywhere in full.