Rejec­tion comes des­pite prior-ship­ment cer­ti­fic­a­tion by Chinese agency.

BusinessLine (Chennai) – Prab­hud­atta Mishra New Delhi New Delhi

China has turned away three ship­ments of Indian rice, alleging the pres­ence of genet­ic­ally mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMO) in what appears to be a cal­cu­lated attempt to gain lever­age in trade talks. The rejec­tion comes des­pite the fact that the non­bas­mati rice con­sign­ments were tested and cleared by a Chinese agency before they were shipped.

India has yet to per­mit the com­mer­cial cul­tiv­a­tion of any GM food crops, with cot­ton remain­ing the only genet­ic­ally mod­i­fied one author­ised in the coun­try. The affected com­pan­ies have taken up the mat­ter with India’s agri­export pro­mo­tion body, Apeda, as well as the Indian Coun­cil of Agri­cul­tural Research, accord­ing to industry sources.

In its rep­res­ent­a­tion to ICAR, Nag­pur­based Shri­ram Food Industry said Chinese buy­ers and author­it­ies were demand­ing an offi­cial declar­a­tion con­firm­ing that rice grown in India is non­GMO, even though only non­GMO paddy is cul­tiv­ated nation­wide. The com­pany reques­ted that ICAR issue a gen­eral state­ment or declar­a­tion con­firm­ing this.

“This would be extremely help­ful for export­ers like us as sev­eral ship­ments to China are cur­rently facing dif­fi­culties dur­ing clear­ance due to the absence of such a doc­u­ment,” the firm noted in its com­mu­nic­a­tion.

Anup Goyal, Chair­man and Man­aging Dir­ector of Shri­ram Food, said the India office of the China Cer­ti­fic­a­tion & Inspec­tion Group (CCIC), a Chinese Stateowned com­pany, had inspec­ted and cer­ti­fied the ship­ments, yet they were rejec­ted by Chinese cus­toms upon arrival.

Goyal stated that they had reques­ted Apeda to invest­ig­ate how these con­sign­ments were rejec­ted on grounds of GMO pres­ence after receiv­ing prior clear­ance.

Industry sources poin­ted out the irony in the situ­ation, not­ing that China itself grows GM rice. In 2006, the European Union even flagged con­cerns regard­ing GM con­tam­in­a­tion in Chinese rice exports.

WHY ONLY INDIA?

For­eign trade policy expert S Chandrasekaran wondered why China is demand­ing GM­free declar­a­tions spe­cific­ally from India and not from com­pet­it­ors like Thai­l­and, Viet­nam, Pakistan or Myan­mar. He said China may be enga­ging in stra­tegic trade plan­ning regard­ing its rice sup­ply.

Data show that India expor­ted 1,80,805 tonnes of non­bas­mati rice worth $79.43 mil­lion to China in 2024­25. Dur­ing the April­Janu­ary period of the cur­rent fiscal year, the volume was higher at 1,86,013 tonnes, though the value was lower at $65.59 mil­lion. Because China pre­vi­ously restric­ted Indian rice through non­tar­iff bar­ri­ers, exports were min­imal until 2019­20, totalling only 567 tonnes, but surged to 3,31,571 tonnes in 2020­21 after the curbs were removed.

USDA data indic­ate that China’s rice imports are estim­ated to rise to 3.1 mt in 2025­26 from 2.3 mt in 202425. Chandrasekaran said while India had dereg­u­lated cer­tain mod­ern breed­ing tech­niques to enhance cli­mate resi­li­ence, China main­tains a high­secur­ity, pro­cess­based approach that may view these tech­niques as a biosafety risk.

Our Bur­eau

With a cov­er­age of over 16 lakh hec­tares (lh) in the past month, sow­ing of sum­mer (zaid sea­son) crops, which will end by May, have reached 42.68 lh as of March 20. This is 2 per cent less than 43.69 lh repor­ted in the year­ago period. The crop is grown before kharif sow­ing and after rabi har­vest.

Though the area under pulses and bajra is up, they are not able to make up for the over­all drop in sum­mer acre­age as both paddy and maize crop acre­age is lower this time.

Farm­ers seemed to be opt­ing for pulses as per the gov­ern­ment plan as all the thrust is on crop diver­si­fic­a­tion.

The gov­ern­ment has fixed a tar­get of 19.67 mil­lion tonnes (mt) of food­grain pro­duc­tion from the sum­mer crops which include 12.15 mt of rice, 4 mt of maize, 1.14 mt of nutri cer­eals and 2.39 mt of pulses in the 2025­26 crop year (JulyJune). The tar­get for bajra (mil­let) is set at 1.1 mt, urad (black gram) 0.32 mt, moong 2.07 mt and oil­seeds 1.37 mt.

Last year, the sum­mer sea­son’s pro­duc­tion was 19.11 mt of food­grains — 11.28 mt of rice, 3.85 mt of maize, 1.26 mt of nutri cer­eals and 2.72 mt of pulses. Besides, the out­put of bajra was 1.23 mt, urad 0.35 mt, moong 2.37 mt and oil­seeds 1.33 mt.

The share of sum­mer crops was 5.3 per cent in the total food­grain pro­duc­tion of 357.73 mt in 2024­25.

Per the weekly update released by the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry, paddy sow­ing was down 3 per cent at 27.86 lh from 28.65 lh, while nutri/ coarse cer­eals area was 12 per cent down at 6.04 lh against 6.84 lh year­ago.

Among the nutri/coarse cer­eals, maize area is 15 per cent lower at 4.24 lh from 5 lh, while bajra has reached 1.38 lh against 1.35 lh, and ragi and jowar are at 0.20 lh as of March 20.

MP URAD BONUS

Area under sum­mer pulses reached 4.09 lh from 3.47 lh, in which cov­er­age of moong reached 2.57 lh and urad 1.28 lh. The key grow­ers of sum­mer pulses are Mad­hya Pra­desh, Bihar, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pra­desh and Gujarat.

Mad­hya Pra­desh, the main pro­du­cer of sum­mer moong, recently announced a bonus on the urad crop grown in sum­mer.

Announ­cing the bonus of ₹600 per quintal over and above the min­imum sup­port price (MSP) of ₹7,800/ quintal for urad, the State gov­ern­ment said the step was aimed at encour­aging farm­ers to shift from moong dur­ing the sum­mer (zaid) sea­son.

Published Date: March 25, 2026