A new round of supervision and inspection of seed enterprises begins

In order to further strengthen the supervision of the seed market, severely crack down on illegal acts such as infringement of variety licenses and pushing without trial, effectively protect the interests of farmers and the legitimate rights and interests of variety owners, and ensure the safety of seeds for agricultural production, the Ministry of Agriculture began to implement the supervision and inspection of crop seed enterprises in 2015. In December last year, the Ministry of Agriculture issued a circular requiring agricultural administrative departments at all levels to supervise and inspect enterprises engaged in the production and operation of corn, rice (including hybrid rice and conventional rice) and cotton seeds within their jurisdiction. Take enterprises with problems found in market supervision in recent years, enterprises reported by rights protection enterprises and farmers' complaints as key regulatory objects to conduct full coverage inspection; conduct full coverage sampling of all varieties of packaging operation of key regulatory enterprises; random inspection and sampling of other enterprises according to the actual situation.

The main contents of this supervision and inspection of enterprises are as follows:

Check the production and operation qualification. Check whether the production and operation license, variety approval and authorization, production and operation files, seed source and destination, packaging label, relevant production and sales contracts are legal and standardized.

Check the authenticity of varieties and seed quality. The seed samples of corn, rice and cotton were taken to test the purity, moisture, germination rate and field identification of variety purity, among which corn and rice were also tested for variety authenticity.

With regard to the testing of random seed samples, the Ministry of Agriculture stipulates that:

Variety authenticity testing: the variety authenticity testing of seed samples sampled by the Ministry of Agriculture shall be undertaken by qualified inspection institutions uniformly arranged by the National crop seed quality Supervision, Inspection and testing Center. Provincial sampling samples of the variety authenticity testing, self-testing with testing ability, those without testing ability can choose other qualified inspection institutions for testing. The authenticity of varieties was tested by the standard samples of approved varieties collected by the Ministry of Agriculture, and the detection method was SSR molecular marker method. The detection standards were "Technical regulations for Maize Variety Identification SSR labeling method" (NY/T1432-2014) and "Rice Variety Identification Technical regulations SSR labeling method" (NY/T1433-2014).

Identification of variety purity. The National crop seed quality Inspection Center is responsible for the field planting identification and test results of corn and rice seed samples collected by the Ministry of Agriculture. The seed samples of corn and rice were sent to Shanxi Agricultural seed General Station and Jiangsu Agricultural seed South Propagation Center respectively. The purity identification of other samples shall be organized by each province (autonomous region and municipality).

Other indicators were tested. The moisture, germination rate and purity indexes of corn and rice seed samples sampled by the Ministry of Agriculture shall be tested by the relevant provincial seed quality inspection institutions themselves. The Cotton quality Supervision, Inspection and testing Center of the Ministry of Agriculture undertakes cotton seed sampling and related testing.

In the next step, the Ministry of Agriculture will send a number of supervision teams to various provinces and autonomous regions to carry out supervision and inspection of key enterprises in relevant provinces. In terms of standardizing the sampling procedures, the circular stressed that in the 2014 special seed anti-counterfeiting campaign, the procedures in some places such as sampling, manufacturer confirmation, result notification, objection handling, and collection and preservation of the chain of evidence were not standardized, which directly affected the later investigation and handling work. In this year's enterprise sampling and inspection activities, all sampling and testing units must strictly standardize sampling and testing procedures, properly retain evidence, such as evidence collection and service, and timely arrange samples for reference one by one, so as to ensure that the evidence chain is complete and traceable. If the sampled enterprise and the labelled manufacturer are not in the same province, the communication and cooperation between provinces shall be strengthened, and the seed management agencies of the province where the producer is located shall actively assist the sampling and testing unit to complete the work of sample confirmation and result notification.

For key regulatory enterprises, if seed samples cannot be provided in this operation, the sampling unit shall have the right to require the enterprise to provide a list of all varieties planned for packaging operation and the time of packaging storage, and issue a written commitment to accept inspection. Sampling units shall carry out follow-up inspection and sampling to ensure that all varieties of their packaging operations are selected. The main person in charge of the relevant inspection institutions shall carefully examine the accuracy of the data and information, sign and confirm it and submit it on time. If important situations and problems are found in the operation, they can be reported to the seed Administration of the Ministry of Agriculture in a timely manner.