As more farmers take up commercial farming, the National Seed Centre (NSC) in Paro is seeing an increase in the demand for vegetable seeds and fruit trees.
But meeting the growing the demand remains a challenge. With limited infrastructure and facilities, the centre is not able to produce seeds in huge quantity.
At present, the centre produces about 57 kilograms of coriander seeds and 13,000 kilograms of seeds of 49 other varieties of vegetables annually.
It also grows 31 varieties of temperate and sub-tropical fruit plants.
“The problem is ad hoc demand. If the people ask for seeds and fruit plants a year earlier, we would be able to produce them,” the centre’s Program Director Sonam said.
“The other thing is we don’t have adequate infrastructure and facilities, such as green house, glass house, fencing and proper irrigation. We expect to build all the infrastructure and facilities in five years from now and hope to comfortably produce enough seeds.”
The centre generates around Nu 51 m annually from the sale of vegetable seeds and fruit plants, but this is not sufficient to improve the existing facilities at the centre.
The National Seed Centre started as the National Seed and Plant Program. It was corporatized and renamed as Druk Seed Corporation in 1995 and then went on to become what it is today.
The journey has not been without glitches.
During the transition period, the budget-strapped corporation struggled to sustain and ended up losing many of its staff.
“When it was the National Seed and Plant Program, we had seven people, but after it was converted to Druk Seed Corporation, only two of us remained back,” Tshering Dendup, who now works with the centre’s marketing division, said.
The old facilities from the time of the National Seed and Plant Program were left unattended after the corporatisation of the program.
We needed money to maintain facilities like glass and green houses. We also needed human capacity, which we didn’t have and then everything started falling apart,” Tshering Dendup added.
Tshering Dendup has been with the centre for 35 years now. He shared hard times continued even after the Druk Seed Corporation was changed to the National Seed Centre and taken under the Ministry of Agriculture in 2010.
The challenges still persist, but the centre says it is working hard to make do with whatever they have.
“Sometimes when they ask for seed and when we don’t have it, we ask from private firms and registered seed growers. We procure from them and sometimes if we don’t have it at all, we import from neighboring countries,” Program Dircetor Sonam said.
Apart from locally produced seeds, the centre also supplies hybrid seeds of cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli imported from Japan.
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