The Hindu Business Line : AP faces huge shortfall in seed production

WITH nearly 500 private seed companies involved in the seed business and a huge production network, the total certified seed (CS) production in Andhra Pradesh was about 2 million quintals during 2002-03 or just 40 per cent of the total requirement for all crops.

The entire storage capacity for seeds is of the order of one million quintals in both the public and private sectors or just under 50 per cent of the current level of CS production.

Modern infrastructure facilities such as cold storage, seed processing units with sizable capacity that should meet the growing demands are yet to be created here though the State is much ahead in infrastructure.

Highlighting these points, a study done by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai's Mr Aldas Janaiah said the public sector financial institutions should provide credit facilities to the private sector and seed cooperatives at low rates of interest to set up modern infrastructure.

Interestingly, Andhra Pradesh has the highest seed replacement rates among States for many crops, ranging from 40-50 per cent in rice (non-hybrid crop) to 80-100 per cent in hybrid crops such as maize, jowar, sunflower and cotton. The contribution of the private sector and farmers cooperatives in the production of CS has grown in the last decade. For example, from virtually zero in 1992, the share has increased to nearly two-thirds of the overall production of rice in 2002, the study said.

Referring to distribution and marketing, the study said there are about 10,000 licensed seed dealers for marketing the CS of public and private sectors. The private sector is also allowed to fix retail price of seeds with adequate incentives to the seed dealers.

On certification and quality control, Mr Janaiah said in his study published in the Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing, that the AP State Seed Certification Agency (APSSCA) was not able to meet the growing certification demands, especially for non-hybrid crops such as rice during recent years. There are about 100 national seed laboratories and 20 State see certification agencies across the country.

With the new seed policy allowing the private sector, cooperatives and NGOs to go for self-certification and label CS with `Truthful Labelling (TFL)', inadequate law enforcement mechanism may not protect the farmers interests in case of private sector misuse of the provisions by distributing poor quality seeds to the farmers, the study warned.

Another problem being encountered was the violation of scientific norms in the testing of new varieties and hybrids before commercial releases in recent years.

The classic example being the way the private sector introduced the seeds of Bt cotton during 2002-03. Similarly, the seeds of rice hybrids were marketed by both public and private sectors during the mid-1990's without establishing adaptability, yield superiority and consumer accept- ance of hybrid rice.

So it suggested a proper regulatory mechanism to enforce that both public and private sector follows scientific procedures in the evaluation and commercialisation of seeds.

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