The Hindu Business Line : APEDA moots amendment to basmati rice export rules

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has proposed to bring amendment to the Export of Basmati Rice (Quality Control and Inspection) Rules 2003 to notify Basmati 320 as a land race or traditional basmati variety in an unseemly hurry that might be detrimental to the conservation of real land race or traditional varieties of basmati being exported by India.

The notification of Super Basmati as “approved and evolved basmati” last year only to export and not for domestic trade or otherwise has evoked the ire of Islamabad since Super was a variety developed by Pakistan in as much as it has decided to contest India’s claim legally here.

Since super basmati itself was the combination of Basmati 320 (traditional variety) and IRR 662 (non-basmati rice variety), APEDA is now notifying Basmati 320 as a land race variety or traditional variety after notifying its offspring as basmati last year.

Sources keen to keep the scientific and research interests of maintaining the pure brood stock of basmati told Business Line here that Basmati 320 has seldom been documented by the Biodiversity Management Committee charged with cons ervation of Land Races or in the Plant Varieties Registry maintained in line with the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001.

Kathmandu meet

They further said that in a paper presented in Kathmandu in a conference in 2004 on agricultural biodiversity, it was claimed that Basmati 320 is a land race from Nepal. If this were established, Basmati 320 would not qualify as Land Race variety as the provisions of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act, 2001, clearly stipulates that the extent variety means a variety available in India. With India asserting that basmati rice as an important product under Geographical Indication (GI), the announcement of Basmati 320 as land race would attract Nepal as beneficiary of basmati rice GI. They further contend that the minutes of the meeting of All India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA) stated that the parentage of super basmati variety of Pakistan has linkage of its parent to China and the Philippines.

AIREA would not be referring to the parentage of non-basmati rice variety variant in ‘super basmati’ and this makes it clear that the parentage of super basmati, in particular Basmati 320, is highly dubious, they add.

Moreover, published documents and International Rice Research Institute Gene Bank which classified 86 varieties as basmati regardless of grain dimensions and intensity of aroma do not have any details on Basmati 320.

The sources said that since the European Commission had issued a regulation in August 2004 on basmati rice for the purpose of Import Duty Abatement, it was necessary to issue a notification on inclusion of ‘super variety’ as one of the recognised variety of India and this was pushed by India into the Letter of Exchange, though subsequently only the notification was issued by the Commerce Ministry.

Available trade figures with the EU suggest that India exported 1.78 lakh tonnes of basmati rice to the EU which increased to 2.26 lakh tonnes in 2006-07 till June 12, 2007, while Pakistan’s exports to EU which was just 41,478 tonnes in 2005-06 skidded to 27,000 tonnes in 2006-07.

Concerned by the steep rise in basmati rice imports from India, Brussels is planning to put in place a DNA testing protocol, which could allow imports of “genuine” basmati rice only.

In this context, APEDA working under the Department of Commerce should not rush to notify more varieties of dubious extraction which might get rejected in the overseas market at a time when India and Pakistan are planning to jointly register basmati rice as GI sui generis to India and Pakistan, the sources warned.

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