Surinder Sud: Seeding a new revolution

FARM VIEW

The ICAR's Rs 200-crore seed production project has taken off well, and field crop seeds doubled last year.

The importance of seed as the vital precursor for harnessing the potential of all other inputs is well known. Still, not much has actually been done in the past to ensure adequate and timely availability of good quality seeds to the farmers. As a result, the new crop varieties remain inaccessible to common farmers for years for want of seed availability.

But this lacuna is now likely to be removed thanks to the launch of a Rs 200-crore seed production project by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).The optimism on this count emanates from the spectacular results obtained under the project in the very first year of its implementation.

While the output of seeds (including nucleus seed, breeder seed, foundation seed and truthfully labelled seed) of field crops has increased by 107 per cent, those of horticultural crops has spurted by 137 per cent and of fish seed (fingerlings and fish fry) by 214 per cent in 2006-07 over the previous year.

This level is likely to double again in 2007-08, maintains ICAR director-general Mangala Rai. Significantly, the scientific production of fish seed has been taken up in such a way for the first time in the country under this project.

At present, hardly 15 per cent of the area is planted with freshly acquired quality seed; the balance 85 per cent being sown with the farmers' self-saved seed. Even in premier food crops like wheat and rice, the seed replacement ratio is poor, between 9 and 18 per cent. It is far lower in other crops. In the case of hybrid seeds which need to be bought afresh for use every year (a replacement ratio of 100 per cent), the actual replacement is far below 50 per cent.

Ideally, the replacement ratio should be at least 20 per cent in self-pollinated crop like wheat (facilitating the renewal of seed every four to five years); between 20 per cent and 100 per cent in oilseeds and pulses; and 100 per cent in hybrid cotton. Otherwise, it is futile to expect optimum yields.

In the case of horticultural crops and fisheries, the situation is worse. While the seeding material of the varieties of fruits and vegetables evolved in the private sector is being taken care of by the concerned companies, there are hardly any agencies to take up the seed production of public sector varieties which far outnumber those of the private sector.

Similar is the case with fisheries. While the production and availability of the seed of catfish and fresh water prawns is woefully meagre, the hatcheries producing the seeds of carps (such as rohu) are suffering from the consequences of inbreeding, needing replenishment of broodstock (elite breeding fish).

It was, indeed, to get over these problems that the seed project was conceived in 2005-06. It sought to involve the country's vast national agricultural research network of the ICAR and state agricultural universities, as well as the non-governmental organisations, in the production of quality seed. Besides, it also aimed at developing the required infrastructure for seed processing, seed testing and other relevant operations.

Notably, the seed project is making an all out effort to involve farmers in seed production to rapidly increase the seed availability and reduce production costs. It is not difficult to teach farmers the technique of hybridisation to produce hybrid seeds of cross-pollinated crops like maize. With some training, they can even begin producing seeds of self-pollinated crops as well.

Simple techniques have been conceived for setting up nurseries for the production of seeding material for horticultural crops. The crucial requirement of soil sterilisation, for instance, is sought to be met simply by covering the land with polythene sheets during peak summer. This helps raise the already high temperature by 8 to 10 degrees, killing the pathogen present in the soil. Indeed, farmers are also proposed to be taught the methods of grafting and other means of vegetative propagation of horticultural plants.

To reduce the time lag in the release of a new crop variety and its actual availability to farmers, the ICAR has mooted a proposal to distribute kits containing small quantities of seeds to large number of villages simultaneously. The farmers themselves would multiply these seeds and spread them through exchange or sale among themselves. Some agriculture universities are already doing so. The private sector, too, is sought to be involved in seed multiplication and its distribution to usher in a virtual seed revolution.

surinder.sud@bsmail.in