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