Unicorn Ingredients’ India Office manager Hemant Gupta wrote an article, published in the Indian Oil Seeds And Produce Export Promotion Council (IOPEPC) News Bulletin from May 2024, concerning the evolution of India’s eesame seed industry and the related challenges and opportunities.
Below you can see the complete article:
Exploring the Evolution of India’s Sesame seed industry: Current challenges and opportunities
Once India was largest sesame seed producing country, but today it is one of the largest sesame seed growing country. The shift from being the largest producer to one of the largest growing countries for sesame seeds highlights an interesting trend in India’s agricultural landscape.
We have been producing 750,000 tons to 800,000 tons average of sesame seed every year for the past many years.
World sesame seed demand is growing every year by 3 to 5% & but our actions were not enough to fulfil the world sesame seed requirements. The situation resulted in more & more countries starting growing sesame seed. Today African countries like Sudan, Nigeria, Mozambique are exporters of sesame seed to India. India is becoming dependent on these African countries & Brazil for their exports.
African countries have come up with Hulling facilities & many other countries like Brazil, Turkey have set up the hulling facilities for suppling he Hulled sesame seed. African origin has low risk of pesticides which is the advantage for these countries. Today supplies from African origin is inconsistent due to logistics & political issues while India has well set up infrastructure & expertise in hulling facilities which is the biggest advantage for Indian processers to sustain the competition.
During 2020 India faced ETO issue & forced to stop export to EU countries. IOPEPC managed to overcome the issue with stringent measures in place & assuring confidence in EU food safety regulations within the period of two months.
It is now time for Indian sesame trade to gear up & work for options towards increasing the production every year by 5% from present average 800,000 tons. It is a challenge for all of us to explore ways & means of increasing productivity & controlling pesticides. It is the right way of competition instead of reducing the price by compromising with the quality.