In a bid to overcome the shortage of quality seed of crops such as soya bean, groundnut and bengal gram in the State, the government has directed the State Seed Development Corporation (SSDC) and seed farms of the agricultural university to step up breeder seed production.
Due to the lack of sufficient quantity of breeder seed of these crops, the State has been forced to look elsewhere. Last month, the SSDC had invited bids for supply of 2 lakh quintals of soya bean seed from Madhya Pradesh, a major producer of the crop. This was because State agencies were internally able to procure only 25,000 quintals of quality soya bean.
On Monday, Agriculture Production Commissioner C. Parthasarathi held a meeting with officials from SSDC, Seed and Organic Certification Authority, Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University, Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research (IIOR) and International Crop Research Institute for Semi Arid Tropics. During the meeting, he said that as Telangana was aiming to become a global seed hub, problems in production of all varieties of seed should be addressed.
Mr. Parthasarathi asked the officials of agriculture research stations at Adilabad, Mudhole and Rudrur to take up production of 1,000 quintals of soya bean and 500 quintals of bengal gram breeder seed.
Similarly, officials of research station at Palem were asked to produce 4,000 quintals of groundnut breeder seed. He noted that the State had been depending on other States for breeder seed of bengal gram in the past.
The officials were asked to encourage production of Basara variety of soya bean, NBeG-47 and NBeG-3 varieties of bengal gram and K-9 and TAG-24 varieties of groundnut breeder seed in the State.
Director of IIOR A. Vishnuvardhan Reddy, Commissioner of Agriculture M. Jaganmohan, Director of Seed Certification Authority K. Keshavulu, T. Pradeep and M. Nagesh of agricultural university, Janila and Srinivasan of ICRISAT also participated in the meeting.
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