Vegetable seed business in India: Present and future trends and new emerging technologies-A Review

Abstract

The general recommendation for intake of fruits and vegetables is at least 400 g per person as recommended by World Health Organization (WHO), five servings of 80 g per day or about 146 kg per person per annum. For vegetables, the recommended intake requirement is at least 300 g per day per individual. This 300 g requirement must include 50 g leafy vegetables, 50 g roots and tubers and 200 g other vegetables (Kapur, 2016). Current annual vegetable production including potato, based on recent three years (2015–16, 2016–17, 2017–18) average is around 177 million tons from 10 million ha giving a productivity of 17.7 ton/ha. With this average and stagnating production and assuming Indian population at 133 crores (1.33 billion) and 25 percent post-harvest losses, per capita per day availability of vegetables comes to 273 g leaving a gap of 27 g between the recommended dose and the availability of vegetables per head per day in India. By 2050, the projected population of India is 1.5 billion and to meet the requirement of this population, vegetable production will have to be 220 million tons, of course making allowance of 25 percent post-harvest losses. Considering all kind of constraints on the available land area of vegetables, the vegetable area will be around 10 million ha and consequently, major gain of production will have to come from productivity increase from current level of about 18 tons/ha to 22 tons/ha and this seems to be a gigantic task as during last several years, the productivity of vegetables in India has been between 17 and 18 tons/ha, an indication that perhaps it has reached to a plateau. This situation will call for massive interventions on technological fronts in terms of innovative products with focus on better hybrids with higher yields, and resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses deploying precision breeding technologies using more of marker assisted breeding, genomics and gene editing tools and delivering high quality seeds to the farmers with assurance of high performance. This review looks into the present seed scenario and the emerging trends with respect to new seeds and new technologies and examines the need to facilitate rules, regulations and IPR environment for more investment in vegetable research and development and quality seed production and distribution. Improved seed with shift towards hybrid seed will be the key driver to increase vegetable production and productivity in India.