PALATE PUZZLE

New Delhi, Sept. 16: The agriculture ministry’s decision to redefine basmati rice may not go down well with exporters.

The new definition plans to do away with the condition that one of the parents should be a traditional basmati variety. The commerce ministry is yet to approve the proposal.

Gopal Sharma of DAD Exports said, “If this happens, then any sub-standard rice can be passed off as basmati. What happens to people like us who are careful about the quality of basmati?”

There have been instances when shipments were sent back from the US and the UAE on concerns over quality. Russia, too, has banned the rice because of quality problems.

Sharma said it was very important to maintain the quality and any aromatic rice should not be allowed to be called basmati as this would earn a bad name for the variety.

Sharma exports around 4,000 tonnes of basmati and 6,000 tonnes of non-basmati rice to countries such as Turkey, Singapore and Qatar.

Manmohan Singh, a patent and trademark lawyer, said if the new definition came into effect, unfair trade practices would come into vogue and inferior aromatic rice would be sold as basmati.

Singh suggested that the aromatic varieties of rice which were not basmati could be labelled as “other Indian aromatic varieties”. India produced about 4 million tonnes of aromatic rice, of which about 1.2 million tonnes were exported as basmati last year.

Basmati is registered as a geographical indication and efforts to dilute this certification will have an adverse impact on the market, Sharma added.