Net helps Agro dept to expose fake seeds racket

AURANGABAD: The agriculture department here recently exposed a Rs 15-crore fake seeds racket, thanks largely to the Internet which helped it seize the seeds in no time.
Additional director of agriculture (Marathwada division), D.S. Vyawahare, told this paper that following complaints of spurious seeds and pesticides flooding the market, his department sent samples to regional laboratories. Laboratory reports, which confirmed the existence of such seeds in the market, were e-mailed the same day to the inspector concerned.

This gave no time to the racket to withdraw the seeds from the market and cotton seed consignments of a Bangalore-based and a Gunturbased firm were seized by the quality control cell, Vyawahare said. He suspected the seeds were being smuggled into the state from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka.