Seed Certification Agency

Seed Certification Agency (SCA) established in 1974 at Gazipur, near Dhaka as a regulatory department of the Ministry of Agriculture. The main function of the agency is to ensure supply of quality (certified) seeds to farmers and thus promote production of high-yielding varieties of various crops. The agency is headed by a director and has 238 staff distributed as 150 in Field Inspection Wing, 21 in Seed Testing Wing, 18 in Variety Testing Wing and 49 in Support Services Wing. The Field Inspection Wing operates with five regional offices and thirty field offices.

The SCA uses its two laboratories - one at Gazipur and the other at Ishwardi, Pabna - for analysing seed samples. It also has five acres of farmland of its own to conduct field-testings. Activities of the agency include advising seed producers on production, processing and quality control of seeds; carrying out post-market quality control through inspection and testing; certifying all breeder- and foundation-seeds of controlled crops as well as of seed enterprises; coordinating the variety evaluation and release mechanism of notified crops; advising the National Seed Board on denotification of varieties for reasons of poor performance or disease and pest susceptibility; helping Department of Agriculture Extension in the promotion and use of improved seeds; and collecting samples of truthfully labelled seeds throughout the country and checking their declared standards.

Until 1990, SCA activities were limited to certification of seeds produced in the public sector. Certification and quality control of seeds produced in the private sector started in 1991 under a special Seed Certification and Quality Control programme. The agency was put under review for improvement of its capability in 1995 with technical and financial assistance of the government of Netherlands. In seed certification procedures, it follows techniques and methods approved by the National Seed Board. The certification is done in four phases- verification of seed sources, inspection of seed crops in the field, inspection and testing of seed lots, and tagging, labelling and sealing of seeds to identify their standards. [Md Habibul Haq] [Haq, Md Habibul Seed Certification Agency, Gazipur]