India’s first consignment of brown Sona Masoori rice to go to EU
Agtech start-up Svastha Ecoharvest is gearing up to export India’s first consignment of Sona Masoori brown rice to Europe. Such rice shipments so far have only been from the Basmati category. Considering the widespread and unguided use of chemicals by farmers, Svastha has rolled out a technological action plan which will help the rice conform to maximum residues level (MRL), even if those are revised on a future date.
Speaking to businessline, Svastha’s managing director S Chandrasekaran said many specialty rice varieties which could have commanded even higher prices than Basmati rice, are not able to do so due to a broad categorisation of rice in India as Basmati and non-Basmati. The demand for brown Sona Masoori will be known once India starts sending it, he said.
Ponni may also be shipped
The shipment may go around August-end if everything goes as per plan, Chandrasekaran said, adding there may also be some quantity of Ponni rice to be shipped.
The brown rice of Sona Masoori and Ponni with MRL compliance are being produced in Tamil Nadu, under an AI-powered (artificial intelligence) quality control programme. The new segment in rice export is expected to exceed 1.5 lakh tonnes in the next five years, provided the government does not create roadblocks.
Though MRL is not a settled status in any agriculture product across globe, still Svastha undertakes in-depth research on all sort of non-tariff barriers (NTB) and closely follow global trends in order to offer technology solutions in such products, Chandrasekaran said.
Stressing that data technology will transform rice farming and trade, he said climate business will be an emerging segment. “Svastha Ecoharvest has been working on a carbon emission reduction programme in the Cauvery delta in accordance with the sustainable development goal. Across the globe, there have been endeavour to develop carbon emission projects in the paddy farming.”
Piloting tech
“The monitoring, verification and reporting has been a challenge to validate the claim. We are piloting a technology in monitoring and reporting verification (MRV) to measure the emissions, which is a first of its kind in the paddy emission segment. Once the commercial scale of this technology is deployed, it could transform the agriculture emission and rice commodity market by way of boosting farm income,” he said.
Svastha, the Chennai-based start-up which has also been encouraging farmers to cultivate traditional varieties such as Karuppu Kavuni, Poongar and Mappilai Samba, plans to deploy drones to monitor crop health and also to ensure the pesticides are applied only at the affected plant with 100 per cent accuracy rather than to spray all across.
He said the company is working on a see and spray computer vision technology in paddy farming as he believes data technology is the next big thing, going to transform rice farming and trade, what milling technologies and new Basmati varieties once contributed to make India a dominant force in the global market.
He said timely detection of a disease in paddy will help the team of scientists to treat the plant with minimum pesticide and drones can play a major role in it.
Svastha has enrolled over 1,500 farmers covering more than 20,000 acres of land for the MRL project in Mayiladuthurai, Thanjavur, Thiruvarur, Cuddalore districts of Tamil Nadu and plans to do a similar one in Karnataka.