Ministry of Agriculture asks States and agencies to be vigilant about suspicious seed parcels

Adhering to the BusinessLine story about National Seed Affiliation of India (NSAI) inquiring the Centre to set its companies on high warn from Chinese seeds penetrating into Indian fields, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare has issued an office memorandum on the matter. Stating that unsolicited seed parcels can be a risk to India’s bio-diversity, the Ministry has requested State Agriculture Departments, agriculture universities, seed associations, certification companies, seed companies and the ICAR to be vigilant about suspicious seed parcels.

The office memorandum mentions that the Department of Agriculture has found the risk of unsolicited/ suspicious seed parcels in mislabelled offers from not known resources ended up reported in numerous nations. “Since last number of months, 1000’s of this kind of suspicious seed shipments have been reported throughout the world” the memorandum outlined putting companies in India on warn.

BusinessLine on August four had revealed a story ‘NSAI warns of Chinese seeds of terror’. The NSAI has not located any Chinese seeds in the Indian marketplace to day, but had issued an warn on the foundation of an Worldwide Seed Testing Affiliation (ISTA) warning on the entry of suspicious seeds in the Indian marketplace.

“We welcome the government’s memorandum on seed contamination threats. The seed officials have been steadfast in dealing with this likely risk. We request the authorities once more, to act in the same way to suppress seed terrorism destroying the cotton seed sector, and punish those dependable for acquiring illegal HT cotton seeds in the place too” explained Indra Shekhar Singh, Director-Coverage and Outreach, NSAI. He extra that by enacting our biodiversity regulations, the authorities will suppress the ₹300 crore illegal trade and deliver a obvious message to all the other bio-pirates and seed terrorists, that India can not be messed with.