Chikkamagaluru: For the first time in its history, the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI), the country’s premier coffee research institution, has decided to involve private stakeholders in scaling up the production of quality planting material for the future of Indian coffee.The institute will offer two types of accreditation: one for elite Robusta clones and another for seedlings. The accreditation will be linked to approved mother plants sourced from CCRI and will be valid for a specific period and premises.Interacting with nursery owners, planters and farmer producer organisations (FPOs) at Balehonnur, M Senthil Kumar, director of research, CCRI, said the initiative aims to ensure the availability of reliable, true-to-type and high-yielding planting material for growers.He said the move was necessitated by growing demand for quality planting material. Until now, CCRI has supplied only seeds and has the capacity to support production of around 60 lakh seedlings. Under the new model, accredited centres will help meet demand by producing and supplying quality planting material to growers.Jeena Devasia, divisional head, Plant Breeding and Genetics, said accreditation is more than nursery registration and serves as a quality assurance system. “It is a mechanism to ensure the production of superior, disease-free and healthy planting material in accordance with prescribed standards,” she said.Accredited centres will receive technical support from CCRI and the Coffee Board, while being responsible for maintaining traceability. “An approved mother garden sourced from the Coffee Board is mandatory. Quality must be maintained through proper propagation, nursery management, record-keeping and tagging,” she added.The initiative seeks to scale up production of elite Robusta clones and Arabica and Robusta seedlings, establish a network of quality nurseries and production centres, ensure the availability of planting material in both traditional and non-traditional coffee-growing regions, and introduce a regulatory framework for the production and supply of quality coffee plants.Eligible nurseries will be accredited as Certified Clonal Production Centres and Certified Seedling Production Centres of the Coffee Board.Devasia said accreditation could be withdrawn if centres fail to meet quality, compliance, source or performance requirements. Grounds for cancellation include failure to produce planting material as per Coffee Board specifications, non-maintenance of standards, submission of false information, misrepresentation, use of unauthorised clonal or seed source material, and other violations of prescribed norms. Centres blacklisted by a Project Screening Committee (PSC) or any state or central government department during the empanelment period will also face automatic cancellation.Stakeholders from coffee-growing regions of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu participated in the meetings held at CCRI, Balehonnur.
