Perception of Seed Quality and Marketing System

Seed is the fundamental input of agricultural crop production. The effective performance of seed affects the minimum use of other costly inputs like fertilizers irrigation and pesticides. Good seed alone can increase the crop production about 20 percent or even more. Generally farmers of Bangladesh produce seed in traditional system by saving a small portion of their crops at the corner of the field and rest of the crop is harvested for consumption or selling purposes. After harvesting the seed crop proper processing and preservation techniques are not followed. As a result most of the farmers of our country produce low quality seed and use this seed in the next season for crop cultivation. The governments of Bangladesh declared its national seed policy wherein provisions were made to involve private sector in production and distribution of quality seed to the farmers. As a result private organizations like RDRS Bangladesh are engaged in quality seed production and marketing as an important tool of Agri-business. This book is based on the MS (Master of Science) work of the first author regarding farmers perception of seed quality and marketing system.