According to sources, the RR-564 could have contracted a disease during the large-scale “testing cultivation” at the agriculture department-run farms where the seed was multiplied for further supply to the farmers.

Sources added that with the paddy growers already facing the brunt of fungus attack, this new problem has threatened the production targets of the agriculture department and also the survival of the people associated with paddy cultivation.

Director, Agriculture, Jammu, Vinod Bala Sharma said special teams have been constituted to assess the problem. “After receiving complaints we have constituted special teams who are collecting samples from the field. It is only when they will submit their report that we can come to any sort of conclusion”.

Farmers said that they did cite apprehensions about the seed provided by the scientists but the agriculture department assured them that it was a high-yielding variety and will mature much earlier than the earlier variety of Basmati.

And as if the fungus attack and failure of the new variety Basmati seed wasn’t enough, the recent hailstorms have dealt another blow to the farmers. Jammu, which was passing through a dry spell, received the much-awaited rainfall from the passing Western disturbances, but the accompanying hailstorms previous week in the border belt of R S Pura, parts of Bishnah, Bari Brahmana and Akhnoor has destroyed the standing crops.

“Hailstorms had affected a large part of the rice-growing areas and has destroyed hundreds of kanals of standing crops,” said Balkar Singh, a farmer at R S Pura belt, famous for its Basmati rice.

... contd.