The Hindu Business Line : Farm Ministry notifies evolved basmati variety for export

‘Improved Pusa Basmati-1’ would increasingly replace the extant “Pusa basmati-1” in the coming years in view of its improved quality and competitiveness.

G. Srinivasan

New Delhi, July 27 The Agriculture Ministry has notified “Improved Pusa Basmati-1” in a move to popularise this evolved variety for export and augmenting farmers’ income. In the face of the Commerce Ministry’s continued reluctance to remove the embargo of one traditional parent clause in the definition of basmati rice for notification purposes for export and its proposal to delete adherence to Seeds Act, 1966, the Agriculture Ministry has come up with this notification.

The Ministry of Agriculture notified on July 20 Improved Pusa Basmati-1, an evolved variety developed by the Indian Agricultural Research Institute. It was developed “by pyramiding bacterial leaf blight resistance genes through marker assisted backcross breeding. It has a strong aroma, less chalky grains and other quality attributes on par with recurrent parent Pusa Basmati-1”.

Definition constraints

The decision of the Agriculture Ministry to notify ‘Improved Pusa Basmati-1’ is deemed a bold move in safeguarding the interests and livelihood concerns of basmati paddy farmers at a time when the traders of basmati thwart every move by farm scientists to include any new evolved basmati paddy seed varieties.

Although basmati rice export worth $700 million a year is monitored by the Agricultural and Processed Food Export Product Development Authority (APEDA) , exports could not be augmented due to constraints in definition imposed by the Commerce Ministry which recognised only 11 varieties – six traditional and five evolved under the Seeds Act 1966.

Subsequently, under the Seeds Act, 1966, six more evolved varieties including the latest ‘Improved Pusa Basmati-1’ has been notified by the Agriculture Ministry. However, it is only in the latest and earlier variety Pusa basmati-1 that the nomenclature ‘basmati’ is suffixed.

Pusa basmati-1

Pusa basmati-1 today accounts for more than 60 per cent of basmati rice exports from the country and is likely that the newly notified ‘improved Pusa Basmati-1’ would increasingly replace the extant “Pusa basmati-1” in the coming years in view of its improved quality and competitiveness.

The Agriculture Ministry might review its definition of evolved varieties to add the suffix basmati to the rest of the four varieties it notified earlier.

Scientists associated with the new evolved basmati variety told Business Line here that when the Commerce Ministry notified the Super Basmati (developed by Pakistan), which does not have a traditional basmati parent, it has unwitt ingly diluted the sanctity of basmati rice definition.

As such, the Commerce Ministry could not afford to oppose the notification by the Agriculture Ministry of improved Pusa Basmati-I as basmati rice by toying with amendments to the Export of Basmati Rice (Quality Control and Inspection) Rules, 2003.

They said that the Commerce Ministry officials who argue assiduously the livelihood concerns of Indian farmers in the World Trade Organisation to safeguard their fundamental interests should not be seen thwarting the moves of scientific community, which helps in releasing improved seed varieties that retain the genetic traits and associated characteristics of basmati even while conferring substantial income benefits to Indian farmers.

Hence, they contend that the definition of evolved basmati should be reviewed in a scientific manner by defining the set of grain and cooking quality features while involving traditional basmati in the genetic lineage. The definition should not be circumscribed to immediate parent but broadened by the genes which now can be precisely marshalled through modern plant breeding tools like molecular marker assisted plant breeding, they add.

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