Poor seed paddy quality at the Burma Rice Research Station

Jun 06, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor;
The allegation is the standards operating protocol (SOP) that govern the production of basic and certified one (C1) and two (C11) seed paddy at the Burma Rice Research Station was grossly disregarded to leading to paddy that should have been sent to mill as commercial grains are now being processed and sold to farmers as high quality seeds.
The facts of the matter is the power drunk and incompetent Head (Dr. Mahendra Persaud) of the Burma Rice Research Station instructed the staff under his guidance to harvest several seed fields that were heavily lodged and rejected by the field inspection and certification team, bulk harvest whole fields that were only partially inspected with areas that were rejected and also instruct to harvest other seeds field that were classified as commercial grains base on the field inspection and certification standard and forcefully sent these paddy to the processing facility to be processed and sell as seed to farmers.
Many farmers who already buy the seed paddy complain of reduced growth and germination. If you look carefully at the seeds you will see molds and discoloration on the grains which suggest that the grains were harvested from the lodged plants during the rainy period. Any experience farmer will tell you once a field is lodged and rain comes and catch it; it can no longer use as seed.
The head know all this. So it now it begs the question- Why is the Burma head trying to dupe the farmers? Is he trying to make the industry fail to make the APNU-AFC government look bad? Is he looking for fame and recognition to show an increase in the average number of bags seeds produced at Burma at the expense of the end users?
This is not the first times seeds field that did not qualify were forcefully harvest by this very same person to be sell as seeds. Something is fundamentally wrong here. If the management does not change this malpractice at Burma research Station the already challenged farmers and their families will suffer much more.
Many senior officers’ with in GRDB objects to this wrong doing, but their call were all ignored by the head who strongly pushing for this bad quality seeds be sold to farmers.
In my view if the seed paddy does not pass the field inspection and quality analysis they should not be sold to farmers as seeds. They should be sent to the mill as grains.
Terry Ross

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