Bangladesh needs wider use of formal seeds to improve farm productivity

Bangladesh needs to gradually move towards a formal seed system to increase agricultural production, with greater use of tested and quality-controlled seeds, said Khorshed Alam, joint secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture and director general of the Seed Wing, on Tuesday.

He made the remarks at a workshop organised for members of the Bangladesh Agriculture Reporters Forum (BARF) at the SAARC Agriculture Centre on the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) campus in Farmgate, Dhaka.

Bangladesh has an annual demand for around 1.3 million metric tonnes of seeds, but only about 30% reaches farmers through the formal system, where seeds are tested and quality-controlled.

Around 40% of the country’s seed supply comes through the semi-formal system, while the remaining 30% consists of seeds preserved by farmers themselves.

Ensuring the availability of quality seeds can help increase farmers’ production and yields while reducing agricultural risks, he said.

Highlighting challenges facing the seed sector, Khorshed said risks remain in areas including seed germination capacity, purity, health, labelling and storage.

Ensuring that quality seeds reach farmers at the right time is another major challenge, he said.

He said prolonged use of seeds of the same variety without replacing them with new and improved varieties could lead to varietal degeneration and increase the spread of diseases and pests.

“The rate of seed replacement needs to be increased,” he said.

Khorshed also highlighted problems related to seed storage, saying excessive temperature and humidity, pest attacks and inadequate drying could deteriorate seed quality.

“Quality control must be ensured at every stage – from production and storage to delivery to farmers,” he said.

He also stressed the need to ensure that farmers receive the required seeds before the beginning of each cropping season.

Even when quality seeds are available, farmers may not achieve the expected production benefits if the seeds do not reach them on time, he said.