Farmers fear low yield from ‘spurious’ seeds
BHAWANIPATNA: Paddy farmers of two villages under Indravati project area are spending sleepless nights fearing low crop yield due to alleged sub-standard seeds.For the last two years, farmers of Bijmara and Badkutru had been procuring ‘AZ 8433’ variety of paddy seeds from a private company, BAYER, which not just promised high yield but also crop resistance to pests like brown plant hopper (BPH) and bacterial leaf blight (BLB). The seeds are priced four times higher than the high yield seed varieties available in the open market.While farmers got high yield from the seeds last year, this season they alleged that the seeds are spurious and not resistant to pest attack.
The AZ 8433 variety of paddy is in various stages of growth now in the villages. While crops in some parts are flowering, some are in reproductive stage. Farmers suspected that the seeds might be spurious as the crops are not growing in uniform manner and different varieties of seeds were found in the packets. “Five to eight per cent impurity was found in the seeds which are not at all resistant to BPH and BLB”, alleged a farmer of Badkutru village, Kartik Pujhari.
The farmers had approached BAYER management recently and experts from its regional office in Sambalpur visited the agriculture fields to ascertain the allegations. Regional Agronomist Sanjay Singh said mixed varieties of paddy plants have been found in agriculture fields where AZ 8433 seeds were planted. “Now the crops are in flowering to grain filling stage. The impurities or seed variations might not impact the yield but one has to wait till harvesting to ascertain that”, he said. Singh said as per Seed Act, genetics of the seed should be 95 per cent (pc) and physical purity 98 pc. A team from Hyderabad will visit the affected crop lands soon to assess the situation, he added.
Meanwhile, the farmers have submitted a memorandum to the Collector on Thursday who directed the Chief District Agriculture Officer Narendra Behera take stock of the situation. Behera said farmers have purchased the non-certified hybrid seeds on their own to get more yield and there is no involvement of Agriculture Department on this. However, field officials of the department have been asked to visit the areas to take stock of the situation.