APEDA moots amendment to basmati rice export rules

The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has proposed to bring amendment to the Export of Basmati Rice (Quality Control and Inspection) Rules 2003 to notify Basmati 320 as a land race or traditional basmati variety in an unseemly hurry that might be detrimental to the conservation of real land race or traditional varieties
of basmati being exported by India.

The notification of Super Basmati as "approved and evolved basmati" last year only to export and not for domestic trade or otherwise has evoked the ire of Islamabad since Super was a variety developed by Pakistan in as much as it has decided to contest India's claim legally here.

Since super basmati itself was the combination of Basmati 320 (traditional variety) and IRR 662 (non-basmati rice variety), APEDA is now notifying Basmati 320 as a land race variety or traditional variety after notifying its offspring as basmati last year.

Sources keen to keep the scientific and research interests of maintaining the pure brood stock of basmati told Business Line here that Basmati 320 has seldom been documented by the Biodiversity Management Committee charged with conservation of Land Races or in the Plant Varieties Registry maintained in line with the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Act, 2001.