NAFED’s desire to sign an agreement with BARC on high yielding seeds is yet to materialize. Reason-the Agriculture Minister is too busy. Sharad Pawar’s plate is full these days as his cabinet colleague and daughter all have come in the scanner of IPL. The minister has little time for farmers.The MOU between NAFED and BARC was to be signed in April only but May has come and no development has taken place so far. According to NAFED sources Minister’s availability is only reason it has been not signed yet.
It should be known that NAFED is to distribute high-yielding seeds developed by the Bhaba Atomic Research Centre (BARC) to farmers to increase agricultural productivity. BARC under its nuclear agriculture and biotechnology division has developed 38 new seeds by combining mutation and recombination breeding techniques.
These include 20 oil seeds (groundnut-14, mustard-3, soybean-2 and sunflower-1,) 15 pulses (green ram or moong-7, black gram-4, pigeon pea or tur-4) and one each cowpea (chowli), rice and jute seeds. The agriculture ministry has notified the seeds for commercial cultivation.