American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) team meeting with NSAI President and Team members (24.04.2024)

On April 24, 2024, a delegation from the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA) met with representatives from the National Seed Association of India (NSAI) at Hotel Le Méridien, New Delhi. The ASTA delegation was represented by Mr. Andy LaVigne, President and CEO ASTA, Ms Cheni Filios, Vice-Chair of the Phytosanitary Committee, ISF, and Mr Biswajit Prasad, RiceTec USA. The NSAI Team was comprised of Dr. M Prabhakar Rao, President, Mr. Dineshbhai B Patel, Vice President, Dr. B B Pattanaik, General Secretary, Mr. Vaibhav Ravi Kashikar, Treasurer, Mr. R K Trivedi, Executive Director , Dr R K Tripathi Director and Technical team from the NSAI Secretariat.

The meeting aimed to strengthen ties between ASTA and NSAI and explore opportunities for strengthening seed trade and research cooperation between the two countries. The Discussion was focused around various aspects of the seed sector in both countries, including research collaboration, policy regarding seed import and export, and the development of Genetically Modified (GM) traits. 

Both associations discussed the importance of locally produced seeds and the need for R&D relationships, especially in innovative fields like genome editing.

President NSAI indicated that there is good scope of import and export of flower and vegetable seeds and hence, opportunities could be explored in these areas. There are also greater possibilities in non- GM varieties of corn, sorghum and soybean. It was suggested by Mr. Andy LaVigne, CEO ASTA that import of germplasm of improved varieties of potential crops to India for research purposes and further development for multiplication and export could also be considered. 

The importance of research in areas such as hybrid rice, direct-seeded rice (DSR), and microbial systems to reduce fertilizer use was also highlighted. 

Mr. Andy LaVigne expressed his interest for ASTA participation in the forthcoming Indian Seed Congress. It was, therefore, made a point that ASTA will be kept informed of the dates for the ISC 2025 well in advance and followed up with them to ensure their participation. 

The meeting ended with the assurance from both the seed associations to keep continue dialogue for mutual cooperation for strengthening the seed business between both the countries.