Hopes of Hybrid Seed Makers Are Now From Alternative Crops

HYDERABAD: Indian hybrid seed makers pin their hopes on alternative crop seeds to help suffice any possible drop in sale of hybrid cotton seeds, because of despite successive droughts, revived pest attacks on hybrid cotton crops.

According to hybrid seed industry representatives, there is fall of around a tenth in sale of cotton seeds. The hybrid cotton seed sales fell to 4.5 lakh crore packets last year from 5.2 crore packets in the previous year.

"Such a move could lead to a fall in sale of cotton seeds. But it won't affect our business as farmers will take up cultivation of other crops and there will be demand for seeds that'll drive our business," said M Harish Reddy, Seedsmen Association's President.

Of the total production capacity of seed manufacturers, nearly 50 percent is dedicated to alternate crop seeds while the rest is for BT cotton production. With changing market scenario, they hope to increase production of alternate crop seeds over a period of time.

"Shifting from production of one crop seed to the other is not a big task and we are equipped with the required machi nery. It's just that it will happen over a period of time and not instantly," said MG Shembekar, National Seed Association of India's Vice president.

The country saw a record growth in cotton crop acreage last year at about 13 million hectares, the highest cotton acreage globally with more than a third of global cotton area, says a report by ICAR-Central Institute for Cotton Research. However, the production is likely to drop to 28.5 million pound bales in 2016 from 29.3 million pound bales last year on account of marginal fall in acreage to around 11.8 million hectares, says a report by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

According to experts that the move by the government to encourage farmers take up alternate crops would be successful only when it has a concrete plan to procure such alternate crop production.

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/