The National Agricultural Seeds Council (NASC) has admonished farmers to avoid buying seeds and seedlings without CODEX, which is the seal of quality authentication containing a special number to be texted to a dedicated line to confirm authenticity, in order to ensure that only the best seeds are supplied for planting.
The Director-General, (NASC), Dr Philip Olusegun Ojo, stated this in Ibadan during the 2022 quality seed enlightenment program, to kick-start the preparation for rain-fed and irrigation cultivation of crops in the South-West zone.
As rain is to farmers, so is good seed, but some farmers don’t know the differences between improved seeds and grains. Some simply don’t care, as they have been disappointed with the sale of some adulterated seeds packaged in the form of improved seeds.
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Therefore, the council, in its efforts to produce quality seed regulation, introduced a turnkey electronic authentication system called SEEDCODEX to track and enable it to effectively fight the scourge of fake seeds.
The NASC boss disclosed that the council was making efforts to ensure that only the seeds sanctioned as good quality reach the accredited suppliers who have met all the quality standards set by the Seed Act so that farmers can have access to them.
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Ojo lamented that improved varieties of seeds that could boost food security are not readily in the hands of farmers because of the activities of unscrupulous elements who bypass the NASC and the Seed Law to trade and market adulterated and uncertified seeds to farmers.
“We enjoin all farmers in the South West and Nigeria to make sure that they purchase seeds that carry the tags of NASC called the SEEDCODEX, which is the seal of quality authentication that NASC has deployed to sanitize the markets and rid them of fake and adulterated seeds.” He said
