The Directorate of Arecanut and Spices Development (DASD) will establish small seed centres at the farm level to make quality planting material available to farmers, Homey Cherian, Director, DASD, Ministry of Agriculture, Kozhikode, said.

Stating that the farming community is in a fix due to non-availability of planting material, he said, “Roughly 20-30 per cent of the planting material requirement is met by government agencies. The rest is through farmer-to-farmer exchange. Seed replacement ratio is not more than 18 to 20 per cent in spices. The Directorate has therefore decided to step in by establishing small seed centres to ensure supply of quality planting material.” Different State Agriculture Universities are also being involved to step up production of planting material with additional finance support for further multiplication, he added.

The DASD Director was here at the third edition of a two-day National Seminar on Spices organised under the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture, Spices Board of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry in association with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.

Speaking on the sidelines of the event, he said, “Besides insufficient production of planting material, other issues such as quality, varieties, pesticide residue, microbial contamination, etc, stood in the way of India emerging a major supplier of spices to the world market. At the National Consultative Meeting on ginger and turmeric, we realised that not a single place was taken up to make planting material available and the incidence of seed-borne disease played havoc in turmeric cultivation.”

The Directorate has, therefore, in association with various State Agriculture Universities, worked out Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) for each crop and in specific regions.

Nirmal Babu, Coordinator, All India Coordinated Project for Spices, stressed the importance of investing in GAP.

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