Seed Industry in India: Poised for a leap

Seeds form the fundamental and crucial input for sustained growth in farm production, often stimulating the use of new methods, machinery and yield-enhancing agro-inputs. The role of the seed sector is not only to ensure adequacy in seed quality but also to ensure varietal diversity. Today, the Indian seed programme boasts one of the biggest seed markets in the world, with annual sales at around US $920 million. Of this, domestic offtake accounts for US $900 million and sales in the global market account for the remaining US $20 million.

The New Policy on Seed Development (NPSD), established in 1988 with the objective of augmenting productivity and output quality, stimulated major growth in the industry as it attracted a lot of investment in seed business from major domestic seed companies. Given the growth of the seed sector in recent years, India has the potential to become the foremost player in the seed export business in the developing world with prospective markets in Asia, Africa and South America.

Public Sector: Like many agriculturally developed Asian nations, India has sizeable public and private sector seed businesses. Giant public sector players include the National Seeds Corporation (NSC), the State Farms Corporation of India (SFCI) and the thirteen State Seed Corporations (SSCs). NSC was the first public sector organization, established in 1963, and remained virtually the only agency for seed production for around 13 years. Its role extended to several developmental programmes including training, quality control and extension activities in seeds. This was followed by the setting up of the SSCs under two consecutive plan periods, supported by the World Bank, and these largely adopted the role of the NSC in the Indian States. These corporations engage principally in production and marketing of seeds of high yielding and hybrid varieties developed by the public sector.

Private Sector: Although private seed companies such as Poacha and Sutton have been established since the pre-independence era, accelerated growth of the private sector began only after the introduction of the new seed policy in 1988 which ushered in a liberal business climate. Currently there are over 200 private seed companies, together with a few multinational companies, and these tend to focus on low volume, high value crops with the principal effort being placed on creating hybrids for oilseeds, maize, cotton and vegetable crops.

The private sector accounts for 70% of the market in terms of market turnover whereas the public sector has the greater share in terms of volume sales.

Global Initiatives: India today has a critical mass and level of growth that it could use not only to cater to the growing domestic requirement but also to make a concerted effort for global trade under provisions of GATT and WTO. Furthermore, India is endowed with second largest area of farmland, and the largest area of irrigated land, in the world and, with its huge germplasm diversity, its seed industry is well placed to serve both domestic and international markets.

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