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    How to identify genu­ine maize seeds this plant­ing sea­son

    The Kenya Ag­ri­cul­tural and Live­stock Re­search Or­gan­iz­a­tion (KARLO) has warned farm­ers against car­tels selling fake maize seeds across the coun­try, just about two weeks to plant­ing sea­son.

    A part from swind­ling from farm­ers in this row deals, fake seeds would lower the coun­try's maize yiled by up to 40 per cent.
    KARLO Dir­ector-Gen­eral Eliud Kireger said the un­scru­pu­lous deal­ers are woo­ing farm­ers to buy the fake seeds on claim­ing they plant­ing ma­ter­i­als have been re­leased by the agency through a joint re­search ven­ture.
    “We wish to ad­vise farm­ers that KARLO has not entered into any agree­ment what­so­ever with some of these fake col­lab­or­at­ors going round the coun­try con­ning them using our name. We urge the them to visit our in­sti­tutes and centres across the coun­try for cla­ri­fic­a­tion and in­form­a­tion,” said Kireger in a press state­ment.
    Al­though identi­fy­ing fake maize seeds is tricky to farm­ers, Farm­biz Africa has pre­pared a check list  to guide farm­ers when buy­ing any seeds from a dis­trib­utor.
    READ ALSO: ABC of maize farm­ing
    Buy from au­thor­ised com­pany’s of­fice or in­sti­tu­tion
    While some com­pan­ies have dis­trib­ut­ors in vari­ous parts of the coun­try, it is safe to seek in­form­a­tion or pur­chase seeds at renowned com­pany’s of­fice. A part from ob­tain­ing genu­ine seeds, farm­ers are likely to get de­tailed in­form­a­tion about plant­ing, yield per acre, pest and dis­ease con­trol from ex­perts.
    They should, however' in­sist on see­ing the com­pany’s cer­ti­fic­ate of re­gis­tra­tion, which must be dis­played at all time, clear­ance cer­ti­fic­ate from KEPHIS and ob­tain a re­ceipt after pur­chas­ing.
    READ ALSO: Suit­able maize vari­et­ies for dif­fer­ent  re­gions in Kenya
    Pack­aging
    Al­though un­scru­pu­lous seed deal­ers are be­com­ing more cre­at­ive to an ex­tent of achiev­ing al­most 70 per cent im­it­a­tion of pack­aging by genu­ine brands, qual­ity of col­our and KEPHIS clear­ance tag dis­tin­guish them. Pack­ages from genu­ine deal­ers have full col­our and KEPHIS tags in­side the bag while fake ones have dim brand shades and lack tags.
    Col­our
    The qual­ity of dye and stitch­ing of the bag can also help farm­ers dis­tin­guish genu­ine seeds from fake ones. Con seed dis­trib­ut­ors ba­sic­ally dye com­mer­cial maize with color syn­onym­ous with a cred­ible dealer, hence achiev­ing poor col­our pat­tern. A close look at a fake white seed dyed in yel­low col­our for in­stance show white strips. The gen­eral col­our is nor­mally lighter or dulls whilst the genu­ine seed has a full shade. Seed bags from genu­ine deal­ers are well stitched.
    Poor maize pro­duc­tion in the coun­try, many a time, for­cing the State to im­port from neigh­bor­ing coun­tries to fill yearly de­fi­cit.


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