A two-day event on rural agricultural development, held at the Marriott Hotel and Convention Centre, Pune, was recently inaugurated by Prithviraj Chavan, the honorable chief minister of Maharashtra. The focus of the expo rested on opportunities for the Indian seed industry, technologies for increasing productivity and the changing needs for the Indian agriculture.
 The National Seed Association of India (NSAI), the apex organization representing the Indian seed industry, presently has about 290 companies as its members.
The vision of NSAI is to create a dynamic, innovative, and internationally competitive, research based industry producing high performance, high quality seeds The theme of the Congress is ''Seeding Rural Prosperity'' and it will be focusing closely on how the Indian Seed Industry in active partnership with all the stakeholders has been actively driving the agriculture growth along with rural Indian prosperity.
 "The idea is to assemble all the members on a common platform and work on the road map of agriculture growth, sector growth of quality seeds, which would ultimately help our farmers," said Raju Kapoor, executive director
of NSAI.
 "This year, we are going to exhibit and inform the farmers about our new technology. Since they will the eventual end users, it is important that theuy get oriented with the technology," added Kapoor.

--staff reporter