Monday, May 6, 2024
Sijan Poudel
High quality seeds of improved varieties are essential to enhance the production of annual crops. In tropical climates, high temperatures and humid conditions combine to cause rapid deterioration of seeds in open storage, resulting in lost value, poor stand establishment, lowered productivity and a disincentive to invest in improved seeds. Most seeds in Nepal are locally produced or self-saved and stored without facilities for maintaining dryness that would greatly extend the seed longevity in storage.
The traditional seed storage practices include: heap and kunio storage of maize, mat bin or Bhakari, mud bins (Deri or Kothi), earthen clay pots (Ghyampo), metal pots (Gagro), urmi or suli method (Maize), plastic bags/containers, and jute bags. The local materials used in seed storage are: neem, bojo, timur, marich, titepati leaves/powders for controlling stored grain pests, sun drying of seeds and cleaning through winnowing, rinsing containers with oils/kerosene, covering mouth of seed containers with ash and chaitaune.
The improved seed storage structures/practices include: improved metal bins, split bamboo bins (Chitrako Bhakari), pusa bin (an improvement in mud bins), sealed storage containers, super grain bags, non-conditioned ventilated godowns, potato seed storage under diffused light, cellar stores for storing fruits, zero energy storage of vegetables/potato. Sun drying is practiced by farmers for drying seeds before storing. Farmers dry seeds for about 4-6 times depending on the moisture content. Some farmers use storage containers cleaned with oil or kerosene, while others treat the seeds with indigenous plant materials like ash, neem, titepati, marich, bojo powders to protect seeds from storage pests.
The community based organizations (CBOs), cooperatives and farmers' groups often follow traditional methods of seed storage. These organized groups, however, face multiple difficulties. They possess non-conditioned store house to store large quantities of seeds on commercial basis; seed producing farmers' groups or cooperatives are limited, both in number and capacity and can serve farmers in accessible districts only to a limited extent. Agro-vets and some private dealers are the only agencies providing seeds in remote districts. However, due to roads and transportation related problems, they are not able to provide timely and required amounts of seeds of improved varieties to farmers in those districts. At the moment, agro-vets are concentrating on vegetable seeds (mostly imported hybrids) while National Seeds Corporation (NSC) meets only 10% of the seed demand of farmers.
The demand of seed is in increasing rate. Cultivation in large scale has started. But there is lack of improved variety seed for growers as there is no provision of seed storage house and storing technologies. The indigenous method now no longer can fulfill the seed requirement. It also arise the question that how the storage of harvested grain in large scale is done. How the stored grain is further processed? How the producer will be in profit?
It is therefore known that indigenous practice is best for small holdings. Only small holdings cannot handle supply-demand ratio. New innovations for seed storage and also updated version of indigenous method is the primary need of the country in agricultural sector.
