Srinagar: For Agriculture to be successful, it starts with quality planting material and creating an effective and sustainable system of supply of high quality seeds. These views were expressed by Director Agriculture Kashmir, Chowdhary Mohammad Iqbal while chairing a meeting with the Officers of National Seed Corporation Government of India and Joint Directors of the Agriculture Department.
He said quality seed is the basic and crucial input for attaining sustained growth in agriculture production. He further added that seed is the very fundamental input which lays the basic foundation for adoption of new technology for crop production, propagation and multiplication thereby the production of quality seed, and the distribution of affordable and quality improved seed is one of the top priorities of the department.
Chowdhary said that one of the biggest challenges is ensuring a wider distribution of quality seed and steps are being taken in this direction. He said department is working on a roadmap to ensure timely and enough supply of quality seeds to individual farmers to achieve desirable results and in this direction a draft seed policy is under the consideration of the government.
K.C Sharma General Manager Marketing NSC on the occasion apprised the meeting that all the seeds produced by the NSC are evaluated for quality standards by NSC and tested in its own quality control labs and the main aim of the corporation is to meet the demand for quality seeds in the country.
During the technical session thread bare discussions were held regarding the issues related to seed certification and other core issues related to hassle free availability of seeds.
The meeting was attended by Joint Director Agriculture Inputs Farooq Ahmad Shah, Joint Director Extension Shahid Iqbal Sheikh, Joint Director Marketing M. Qasim Ghani, Joint Director Farms Syed Waseem Ahmad Shah, Joint Director Apiculture and Mushrooms M. Syed Peer, Regional Manager NSC, N.R. Yadav Deputy Director Planning M. Younis Chowdhary, Seed Certification Officer Kashmir Mir Aijaz Hassan and other Senior Officers of the department.

KR Desk