Global Sunflower Seed Meet

• 04 Jul 2019

India will host the 3^rd International Sunflower Seed and Oil Conference (ISSOC) 2019 on 19^th–20^th July in Mumbai.

• Organized by the International Sunflower Oil Association (ISOA), it will be hosted by the Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA).

International Sunflower Oil Association (ISOA)

• International Sunflower Oil Association (ISOA) was established in the year 2015 in Rome by National Associations and Companies from China, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Spain and Argentina.
• It aims to encourage and promote better communications among sunflower oil producers, industry groups, academic researchers and local governments, as well as enhancing sunflower oil value addition and enlarging the field of its commercial application.
• The first International Sunflower Oil Symposium and ISOA launching ceremony was held in October 2015, in Shanghai, China and the second conference was held in July 2017 in Odessa, Ukraine.

Sunflower Seed

• The sunflower seed is seen as a healthy table-seed and culinary seed having wide applications in a variety of food preparations including cakes and pastries.
• The global sunflower seed production in the year 2018-19 is estimated at 51.41 million tonnes, sunflower oil at 19.45 million tonnes & sunflower meal at 20.90 million tonnes.
• Leading producers of sunflower are Ukraine, Russia and Argentina, while countries like Belarus, France, Hungry, Romania, Kazakhstan, Turkey, Tanzania, China, India produce relatively smaller quantity.
• The leading importers of sunflower oil are India, China, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey & EU.
• The leading importers of sunflower meal are, China, Turkey, France, the Netherlands, Belarus, Spain, Poland, and India among others.

India’s Consumption of Sunflower Oil

• India is the largest importer of sunflower oil with imports of about 2.8 million tonnes.
• The global imports of sunflower oil is around 9.6 million tonnes. This shows the significance of India in the global sunflower seed and oil market as every producer or exporting country in the world looks to India for a market.

The Solvent Extractors' Association of India (SEA)

• The Solvent Extractors’ Association of India was formed in 1963 to help and foster the development and growth of Solvent Extraction Industry in India.
• At present the Association is having 875 members including about 350 working solvent extraction plants having combined oilcake/ oilseed processing annual capacity of about 30 million tonnes.
• The Association is an all India body to solvent extractions industry and premier vegetable oil association in the country having wide representative membership consisting of processors of Rice bran, Oilcakes, Minor Oilseeds and Soybean.
• It is financially autonomous and functions entirely as private sector body.
• It is the first Association in Vegetable Oil & Oilseed sector and may be one of the few Associations/Chambers in India to receive quality standard ISO 9001:2000 registration.
• It is recognised as a Non Government Organisation (NGO) by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government. of India .
• It is also a Trade Promotion Organisation (TPO) recognised by the Ministry of Commerce, Government of India.
• It is located in Mumbai.