Monsoon storage: the pouch seal matters more than the shed

Seed is alive and it drinks air. In a Maharashtra monsoon, a jute godown that looks dry can still push moisture through a poorly sealed pack. Germination falls weeks before you smell anything wrong.

Manganga pouches are filled by weight and moisture-sealed, then batch-coded. Keep them off the floor, away from the wall, and out of direct sun. Do not slit a 1kg pack to sell 100g in an open bag unless you will move that seed in a few days.

If a dealer returns a lot that sat through two wet months in an unsealed crate, we will still test our retained sample. The printed figure is for seed that left our store in a closed pack — not for seed that travelled open.

For farm storage until sowing, a sealed pouch in a cool, dark corner beats a clay pot with a cloth lid. Open only what you will sow that week.