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G. Srinivasan

Mr K.S.Money, Chairman

New Delhi , Sept. 15

THE Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) will put in place by November 2005 a DNA testing facility for basmati rice exporters in order to comply with the demands of the European importers about the authenticity of the exported consignment.

The proposed facility is to be managed by the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad.

The Chairman, APEDA, Mr K.S. Money, told Business Line in an interview that the European Union (EU) was a major market for basmati rice from India accounting for 15 per cent share. The European market for basmati rice had become a scramble among basmati rice exporters from India, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam and the US with both traditional and evolved varieties of basmati competing for a pie, he said.

Suggestion to EU

However, in order to distinguish traditional basmati from evolved varieties, India has suggested to the Food Safety Authority of the UK and to the European Commission (EC) that at least one parental line should be traditional basmati and there is a need to provide "contemporaneous documentation" to establish the lineage.

"But other varieties of basmati including evolved ones by India and other countries too get into the European markets, even as European importers attempted to keep the definition of what is traditional basmati open in order to bring new and evolved varieties which we are not agreeable to," Mr Money said. Hence, EU came out with regulations requiring DNA testing of basmati rice for the sake of authenticity, even as the EU regulations stipulated that any rice being imported into EU shall not sell below the reference price. Alongside, in a move to give some fillip to high quality traditional basmati, exporters duty derogation was extended not only to traditional but also to evolved varieties of Indian Pusa and Pakistani "super" basmati.

However, to qualify for duty derogation, Indian exporters need to have a DNA testing done, he said, adding that for Apeda, the CDFD has put up a dedicated facility at a cost of Rs 3.52 crore which is fully funded by Apeda, Mr Money said. Not only traditional and evolved varieties of basmati but also non-basmati rice would be tested to improve farmers income through better produce, he said.

Development fund

He said in order to ensure the overall development of the basmati rice, a Basmati Export Development Foundation (BEDF) had been set up at Meerut (UP) in the Sardar Patel University of Agriculture & Technology. There were also three agri-export zones under implementation in UP, Punjab and Uttranchal for ensuring the overall development of the supply and value chain for basmati rice.

Mr Money said Apeda had also proposed a scheme under which Indian suppliers could get direct access to retailers, food retail chains abroad with a motto of quality produce in large quantities. He said foreign investment in retailing especially in food products would help realise better price for growers with supply chain getting more fully integrated by technology. There would be a direct link between the farmers and the markets, bypassing intermediaries, he said.

Explaining the headway made by Apeda ever since its advent in 1986 by an Act of Parliament, Mr Money said the Authority had helped fashioning several schemes such as infrastructure development, quality development, market development and research and development over the years for agri product exporters.

Info portal

Currently "we are into developing a portal in the next three to four months which would give exporters current information — including the prevailing price overseas and who will own what share of the markets — by way of market intelligence," he said.

He said APEDA was instrumental in setting up 60 agri export zones across the country in 20 States where identification of a single commodity to be grown on a large cluster and drawing different agencies, both Central and State governments are being done by it. The record of AEZs was "mixed" but there were resounding success stories such as gherkins of Karnataka and grapes of Maharashtra, Mr Money said.

APEDA helped in successfully evolving standards for the nascent export trade of grape by tying up with the National Research Centre for Grape as the referral laboratory for testing grapes particularly for the European importers when they run a campaign of pesticide residue in Indian grapes, he said.

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