Studies on policy option for quality seed production and preservation of cereal crops at farmer’s level for the improvement of food security

The project investigated the constraints related to availability of quality seed production of rice, wheat and maize over 5 sites in Bangladesh involving 1350 sample farmers of small, medium and large categories. The results revealed that there were significant differences in adopting technological advice and inputs among the farmer groups but the farmers mostly used homegrown seeds for rice (78.7%) and wheat (55.3%); BADC supplemented only up to 10.0%. A majority (74.0%) of the maize farmers collected hybrid seed from dealers/traders, 12.0% from seed companies and 10.0% from NGOs. For rice seed production, the essential seed production practices were not followed by 96%-99% of the farmers. For seed rice drying, 82% farmers used Katcha floor and 9% used trepal; the corresponding figures for wheat were, 66.0%, 22.0% and 10%. For rice seed storage, 39.7% farmers used earthen pot, 25.3% jute bag, 20.3% dulee and 9.3% plastic bag. A major proportion (>80%) of rice and wheat farmers did not practice any intermittent drying for safe seed storage. The average post harvest loss of rice grain/seed was 15.8%, occurring mostly during handling and transportation at harvesting and post-harvest processing stages. The laboratory analyses confirmed high moisture content of farmers’ homegrown rice (14.7%) and wheat (14.3%) seeds together with poor germination (rice, 69.1%; wheat, 75.2%).  Based on the findings, the study suggested a number of policy options in order to improve the quality of farmers’ homegrown cereal seeds to ensure food security in Bangladesh.