Role of indian seed industry in promoting food and nutritional security and agricultural sustainability

Abstract

The greatest challenge before Indian agriculture is to achieve sustainable agricultural growth instead of volatile one, which has been the hallmark of the decade. Increased crop productivity is required to boost agriculture growth for poverty reduction and enhance yield stability under extreme weather conditions due to climate change (CC) effects. Development, deployment and diffusion of climateresilient, efficient, resource-utilizing and high-yielding varieties (HYVs) are required to attain the desired growth as the genetic gain made by plant breeding could only be translated through obtaining higher productivity. The seed and varietal replacement rates are still low, and ultimately, investments incurred to develop new varieties are not realized due to poor adoption and diffusion, and majority of marginal and small farmers (M&SFs) remain deprived of quality seed, which ultimately leaves huge gaps. Attention needs to be paid to the development and deployment of varieties amongst the traditional crops having local importance and specific adaptation. More efforts from the seed industry are required to resolve the seed issues amongst high-volume low-value crops as they are mainly grown in low input.