The Study on Rice Seed Quality Control System of Thai Farmer

Abstract

Thailand has approximately 69.13 million rai of rice plantations. The demand for rice seed annually is 1.38 million tons, while all rice seed production segments cannot serve the demand throughout the country. Low-quality seed results in low quality and quantity of rice products. Therefore, the production and distribution of high-quality of rice seed is an important challenge in the country. The good agricultural practices for rice seed (GAP seed) system is a tool for seed quality control. This system is for control field management, conditioning process, seed storage and seed quality analysis. The result of this quality control system in community levels, farmer organizations and rice seed producers in government and private sectors was conducted. The result of the study in 2018-2020 showed that the GAP seed certification was given to an average of 144.67 farmer groups, the maximum GAP seed adoption was in field management (97.71%), followed by the practice during the storage and conditioning process (96.74% and 95.67% respectively). Comparing among farmer organizations, the highest number of GAP seed adoption was agricultural cooperative (100.00%), followed by large-scale farmer groups, rice community centers and seed production groups (97.86%, 95.29% and 93.67%, respectively). For the practical problems, the highest number was in field management, followed by during storage and conditioning process. When compare among farmer organizations, the highest number of practical problems was found in agricultural cooperatives (66.25%), followed by large-scale farmer groups, rice community centers and seed production groups (47.48%, 37.89% and 19.55%, respectively). The result of the seed quality analysis showed that there was significant difference in the quality of pre-conditioned rice seed among each seed producer segment. For the quality of postconditioned rice seed, there was significant difference between the rice seed producer groups and rice seed distributor groups. The quality problems of the rice distributor groups were low germination percentage, low
pure seed, high inert matter, and high number of red rice and other rice variety. Therefore, the rice seed distributor groups should be suggested in postharvest management to prevent variety contamination or to avoid quality loss, inert matter separation, seed storage and seed sampling for quality inspection.