M A I N   N E W S

Export Trouble
Govt doesn’t want basmati to go the honey way
Joins hands with exporters, gives growers tips
Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, December 5
Having lost the battle for export of honey and grapes to Europe because of alleged high pesticide content in them, the government is joining hands with All India Rice Exporters Association to ensure that the basmati rice does not meet the same fate in the prestigious European market. With some private laboratories in Europe raising a hue and cry over higher residue levels of pesticides in basmati grains, the government and rice exporters are also chalking out a strategy to counter them.

Earlier this year, a Hamburg-based private testing firm had pointed at higher levels of Isoprothiolane (a fungicide used to control rice blast disease) in the Indian basmati. Though Isoprothiolane does not fall in the list of pesticides for which maximum residue limits (MRL) are specified in Europe, it is assigned a default MRL of 0.01 mg/ kg, and the German laboratory claimed that the basmati had elevated levels of 0.03 per cent of carbedenzum and isoprothiolane.

Notably, basmati worth $300 million is exported to Europe from India. In 2009-10, India exported an estimated 2.6 million tonne of basmati rice, of which 0.3 million tonne was exported to Europe.

Though this report did not lead to a backlash from the retailers in the 27 countries of European Union, the nervous basmati exporters have sought the government’s help in changing the old-farming practices followed by growers. “European labs have raised the issue that pesticide spray, after the basmati crop starts flowering, leads to its penetration in the milky stage of the grain. This pesticide content cannot be removed. So, we are asking the agri-extension workers to approach the farmers and tell them to use fungicide- treated seeds rather than using the spray at the time of flowering,” said Vijay Setia, president of All India Rice Exporters Association.

The state agriculture departments are now issuing a manual of best practices for pesticide spray to the basmati growers and asking them to go in for preventive pesticides, rather than using them at the flowering stage of the crop. The exporters, too, are in talks with agriculture experts so that they can talk to basmati growers and convince them to use disease-free seeds taken from a healthy nursery. The package of practices suggested to them also include seeds being properly treated with fungicides before being sown, besides giving farmers time of watering the fields to avoid heat stress.

The government is also trying to counter the claims made by the German laboratory by citing the example of Europe allowing rice exports from Japan, which too, had higher MRL than the specified 0.01 mg/ kg.