Desi seed saving: selecting, drying and storing for next sowing

Seed saving done badly gets worse every year, and that is where the reputation of desi seed as low-yielding comes from. Seed selected deliberately from standing plants, dried properly and stored dry holds its vigour for years — and is free.

Seed saving starts in the field, before harvest

The commonest mistake is keeping seed from the threshing floor. That is a sample of the whole field, including every weak and diseased plant, and it drags the population down a little each season.

Walk the field at maturity and mark plants. Select for:

• Plants that are typical of the variety, not the largest freaks
• Freedom from any disease symptom, however slight
• The maturity date you want — selecting the earliest plants for several years shifts the whole population earlier
• Standing ability, pod or grain retention, and uniform filling

Mark with a cloth strip and harvest those plants separately by hand. For a household seed requirement, thirty to fifty well-chosen plants are usually enough.

Keep the population large enough

Saving seed from too few plants narrows the genetic base and the variety loses vigour within a few generations. The requirement depends on how the crop pollinates.

• Self-pollinated — wheat, rice, most pulses, tomato, brinjal. Twenty to fifty plants is sufficient.
• Cross-pollinated — maize, pearl millet, most cucurbits, onion, radish. Two hundred plants at minimum, and preferably more.

Cross-pollinated crops also need isolation. Maize needs 200–400 m from another maize field, or a difference of three weeks in flowering time. Without it, the neighbour’s hybrid pollen is in your seed and you will not know until next season.

Dry to the right moisture, slowly

This step determines everything about storage life, and it is where most saved seed is ruined.

Dry in shade with good airflow, not in direct sun on a concrete floor. Surface temperature on concrete at noon will kill the embryo while the inside of the seed is still wet.

The rule of thumb: each 1% reduction in seed moisture roughly doubles storage life, and each 5°C reduction in storage temperature does the same. Dry and cool beat every treatment you can apply.

Store dry, sealed and cool

Traditional storage worked because it addressed exactly these variables. Earthen pots sealed with clay and cow dung, ash layered between seed, neem and vitex leaves as repellents, and the whole thing kept in the coolest part of the house.

A modern equivalent that works as well and is easier to verify:

• Airtight container — a plastic drum with a gasket lid, or a well-sealed metal bin
• A cloth pouch of dried, cooled wood ash or silica gel inside, at about 10% of seed weight
• Neem leaf powder mixed through pulses at 2% by weight, against bruchid beetle
• Stored off the floor, away from any wall that gets afternoon sun
• Labelled with crop, variety, field, date and the germination result

Test germination before you commit a field

Count a hundred seeds. Roll them in a damp cloth, keep it damp but not wet, and count the normal seedlings after the crop’s standard period — four days for most cereals, seven for pulses.

Above 85%, sow at the normal rate. Between 70 and 85%, raise the rate proportionally. Below 70%, do not sow it. Replacing seed costs one season; a poor stand costs the whole crop.

Test once at storage and again two weeks before sowing. The second test is the one that matters.

What seed saving will not do

Seed saved from an F1 hybrid will not come true — the second generation segregates and yields fall sharply. Save from open-pollinated and desi varieties only. And when a variety does start to degenerate despite good selection, a fresh introduction of the same variety from another farmer’s line restores vigour. That exchange is how these varieties were maintained across generations in the first place.

Further reading: SeedNet India lists notified varieties, which is the check to run before seed saving from a new line.