Quality Guarantee Of Australian Wheat To Be Sought

An Indian team of experts which recently left for Australia to discuss the problems of contaminated wheat from that country will seek an assurance about quality of future contracts besides studying the Australian system of wheat harvesting.

We will tell our counterparts in Australia to be more careful regarding their export consignments and should ensure the minimum or no weeds in their stocks'', a senior delegation member said before the departure.

During the week-long tour of Australia the four-member delegation, comprising reperesentatives from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the STC and the quarantine experts, will visit various wheat growing areas and places of harvesting and despatch.

 

It will be a kind of exploration visit to inspect their system and find out from their wheat growing areas the possibility of weeds infecting the grains,'' said the official.

The Australian government has been positive in its outlook about our concern and have agreed to fully cooperate in our efforts,'' he said.

India had been insisting on a government-to-govenment contact on the quality aspect as it concerned people, the delegation members said.

While the quarantine experts would be studying the finer aspects of safety of the wheat from the weeds and other contamination, the ICAR scientists would focus on the magnitude of diseases, if any, said the official.

When asked whether there would be any negotiations on the prices of the wheat to be imported from Australia in future, the delegation members clarified this would purely be an exploration visit and we are not going to negotiate on prices or any of the kind.''

Since ours is not a trade delegation, such issues would not figure during our discussions and we will only concentrate on the wheat we have received from Australia and the ways and means to check the future inflows of infected wheat'', said the members.

The team would submit a report on its visit to the govenment for an in-depth discussion, a member of the delegation said.

Australia will be mainly represented by the country's quarantine service and Australian Wheat Board.

It may be recalled that Australia after inspecting the quality of wheat supplied to India admitted that there were some weeds found in the grain.

Although the Indian quarantine experts did not find the level of weeds alarming, it was decided by the agriculture ministry to pursuade the Australian side to have a govenment-to-government discussion on the matter to project the magnitude of the situation.

Following the detection of weeds, the agriculture and the food ministry had decided to distribute the Australian wheat consignment to non-wheat producing areas as any spill over of the weeds could infect the land.

The STC, which was authorised by the centre to import wheat, would also study the system of loading and other facilitates in the ports.

The government has clarified that the wheat imports from Australia and other countries were undertaken after floating tenders amongst leading foreign traders.