Rajasthan farmers object to GI on Unjha jeera and saunf

“In Unjha, jeera is only traded, not produced. How can there be an Unjha Jeera when the crop isn’t even grown in that area?,” asks Choudhary, who farms jeera on 70 out of her 100 bigha (16.7 hectares) holding in Undoo village of Barmer district’s Sheo tehsil.

Her statement is backed by the Gujarat government’s data, showing the area under jeera in Mehsana district at a mere 174 hectares (out of the state’s total 4,76,537 hectares) and production at 149 tonnes (out of 4,07,629 tonnes) during 2024-25.

Ishaq Ali undertaking intercultural weeding operation at his saunf field in Kachholi village of Sirohi district.

For Choudhary – she is also a director of the Maru Laxmi Cumin Farmers Producer Company – Unjha is a preferred market despite it being some 370 km from her village: “The APMCs within Rajasthan are closer, like Jodhpur (165 km) and Merta (290 km). But we don’t get good rates there, unlike in Unjha that has more buyers, including major exporters and trading firms”.

Choudhary’s cooperative pooled about 2,000 tonnes of jeera from its 400 women farmer-members during the 2025-26 crop season (October-March). Out of that, 500 tonnes was sold as IPM (integrated pest management)-quality jeera to the Aluva (Kerala)-based spices processor AVT McCormick Ingredients Pvt. Ltd at Rs 230 per kg. The balance 1,500 tonnes was sold in the Unjha APMC at Rs 180-200/kg. At an average Rs 210/kg rate, the cooperative recorded a turnover of Rs 42 crore.

“The GI tag for Unjha Jeera will be used by traders at the APMC to beat down our prices. They will paint our jeera as inferior and their produce as premium,” she alleges.

Interestingly, the notified geographical area for ‘Unjha Jeera’, as per the registration certificate issued on March 28 by the Geographical Indication Registry in Chennai, is not limited to Mehsana. It also covers Banaskantha, Patan, Ahmedabad, Surendranagar, Botad, Morbi, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Amreli, Gir Somnath, Junagadh, Porbandar, Devbhumi Dwarka and Kutch districts of Gujarat.

A similar apprehension is voiced by Rajasthan’s saunf farmers. Ishaq Ali grows the seed spice on nine out his 10-hectare land in Kachholi village of Sirohi district’s Pindwara tehsil. He, too, sells half of his 22-23 tonnes produce in the Unjha APMC that is roughly 130 km away.

The ‘Abu Saunf-440’ variety developed by him – registered as a “farmers’ variety” under the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act – is cultivated in over 5,000 hectares area of Sirohi district in the foothills of Mount Abu.

“I get a premium for my bold and lustrous green-seeded saunf variety having unique aroma. It fetches Rs 450-500 per kg in online sales and Rs 300-400 in Unjha, whereas the regular saunf there is sold at Rs 100-200,” claims Ali.

The 55-year-old fears that the GI tag for ‘Unjha Fennel’ will undermine the saunf grown in Rajasthan, including the speciality variety bred by him through field-level knowledge and selection: “How can you register a GI in the name of an APMC?”.

The geographical area of cultivation for which the ‘Unjha Fennel’ GI certificate of registration was given on March 28, again, covers several districts of Gujarat: Mehsana, Patan, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Aravalli, Kheda, Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Surendranagar, Morbi and Kutch.

Dinesh Patel, chairman of the Unjha APMC, defends the GI tags: “Unjha region is the pioneer in jeera cultivation. The acreage may have come down, with people taking its seeds for growing in other places and even China. But since the production originated here, only the crop in this geography, and not China, can be called Unjha Jeera. It’s like Gir Kesar mango. Even if it is grown in orchards elsewhere, only that mango can be Gir Kesar mango”.

Regarding ‘Unjha Fennel’, Patel affirms that “the taste of our saunf is completely different”. Moreover, the GI certificates for both products were obtained after submission of “more than 1,000 pages of documents containing scientific evidence, analysis, etc”. The applications for the GIs were made on June 24, 2024, with authentication letters from the Gujarat government’s directorate of horticulture, Sardarkrushinagar Dantiwada Agricultural University at Banaskantha and the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India, Ahmedabad.

However, Bhagirath Choudhary, founder-director of the Jodhpur-based South Asia Biotechnology Centre, contends that the GI applications for ‘Unjha Jeera’ and ‘Unjha Fennel’ have predominantly relied on Unjha’s reputation as a premier spices aggregation, grading and trading centre.

“GI protection should be based on a product’s unique quality and other attributes linked to a place or region where it is produced, as opposed to marketed. Unjha is internationally recognised more as a marketing centre than a production hub. A substantial proportion of the jeera and saunf sold in the Unjha APMC, in fact, originates from Rajasthan,” he points out.

According to him, the claimed uniqueness of ‘Unjha Jeera’ and ‘Unjha Fennel’, attributed to the environmental and edaphic (soil) conditions or traditional cultivation practices prevailing in Gujarat, “are general in nature and equally applicable to that of Rajasthan”. In this case, the defined GI area extends much beyond Mehsana to cover half or more of Gujarat, while excluding the spices-producing areas of Rajasthan not that far from Unjha.

A top scientist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research opines that GI claims on any farm produce – relating to essential oil profile, aroma, flavour or other biochemical characteristics and the extent of their being influenced by genotype, soil, climate, agronomic practices and post-harvest handling – must be subject to independent evaluation.

“The GI Registry could have sought the opinion of an apex institute with domain expertise, like the National Research Centre on Seed Spices at Ajmer, here,” he adds.

In 2024-25, Rajasthan was India’s biggest jeera producer, at 6.89 lakh tonnes (lt), followed by Gujarat’s 4.72 lt. In saunf, Gujarat (1.31 lt) was ahead of Rajasthan (0.44 lt).