Sunflower seeds bought from MNCs fail in key trials

BANGALORE, DEC 6: There is trouble, unreported so far, in the sunflower growing belt of Gulbarga district, particularly in Aland, and to ...

BANGALORE, DEC 6: There is trouble, unreported so far, in the sunflower growing belt of Gulbarga district, particularly in Aland, and to a lesser extent in Afzalpur taluk. The rabi crop has failed there after hybrid seeds that were used did not germinate fully.

Agitated farmers went to the dealers who had sold them the seeds belonging to Cargill (now owned by Monsanto) and the Australian giant Pro Agro which sells the popular `Jwalamukhi’ brand. Some farmers say that they were offered money not to register official complaints in this regard.

Opposition politicians from the region have been approached by farmers who do not know about the larger issues involved. However, SB Biradar, the Joint Director of Agriculture, Gulbarga district said that not many farmers had come forward to register complaints.

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He nevertheless said he had received five official complaints from farmers who had used Cargill’s hybrid sunflower seeds. Significantly, investigations by the Directorate confirmed that in two of the casesthe seeds did not germinate fully, while in the other three they produced “multi earheads” implying that they were “genetically impure seeds”.

Biradar who has himself served as a public breeder said that “multiheads” instead of the normal single earhead meant that the crucial seed-bearing female plant had been outmanoeuvred by the male represented by the multihead crop. It also means that such plants will not be able to produce further seeds for germination.

In the two cases where the seeds did not germinate, the official is less willing to commit himself. He says there is scope for ambiguity in the fact that the farmers had bought their seed stocks in June-July and had used them for the Rabi crop for which sowing is done in October-November. In both cases it was after the expiry date mentioned on the seed packets, he said.

Unconfirmed reports also suggest that in Bijapur district too, where the rabi sunflower is more extensively grown, farmers might have suffered similar crop failure.

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Why didthese crops fail? Is something being tested here that we do not know about?

Minister Byre Gowda did not seem to have much information regarding this.( He was the one who initially said that he was not aware of any Monsanto field trials in Karnataka – a position he has since corrected.) On hybrid seeds leading to crop failure, he only says “crop failures are often due to other reasons”.

A more serious insight was provided by an expert at the University of Agricultural Sciences, who said that they had been unable to detect the reason for the seeds not germinating.

This must be read in the context of the Central Government’s own admission earlier that India did not have the technology to detect what kind of genes were being brought into the country by multinational seed companies.