India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has launched Harit-SANKALP, the country’s first digital platform for seed traceability, in collaboration with FAO

The National Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (National CAMPA), under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), has launched Harit-SANKALP (System for Accreditation, Nursery Knowledge for Afforestation Linkage Platform). The platform aims to strengthen transparency and traceability in forest nursery management and the supply of quality planting material across India.

Harit-SANKALP has been developed as a centralized digital solution and represents a significant step towards modernising nursery operations and strengthening accountability across the forestry and afforestation ecosystem. It is designed as a comprehensive, role-based digital workflow supporting advanced planning, inventory management, traceability, and monitoring—from seed source and nursery raising to the final dispatch of planting material. The portal enables forest departments across States to standardise processes, enhance coordination, and make informed, data-driven decisions.

A key feature of the platform is the generation of system-defined unique identification codes for every registered entity, including Seed Production Areas, Seed Orchards, Seed Processing Units, Seed Storage Units, and Nurseries. This uniform identification system eliminates duplication, ensures consistency across States and Divisions, and establishes a single, reliable source of nursery-related data. The portal also has a facility for booking for the procurement of plants by anyone in advance.

The portal also auto-generates QR codes for nurseries and planting material batches. These QR codes provide instant access to detailed information through scanning, enabling efficient field-level verification, monitoring, and quality assurance. To begin with, all existing forest department nurseries across the States, which will be providing plantlets for the afforestation programme with CAMPA funds, are being mapped onto the platform and converted into a standardized digital format, with each nursery assigned a unique code and QR identity. Subsequently, it may be expanded to all the nurseries of the forest department.

Harit-SANKALP enables end-to-end traceability of planting material, tracking each stage from seed sourcing and processing to nursery raising and dispatch. This strengthens quality control mechanisms and enhances accountability, particularly for CAMPA-supported afforestation and restoration activities.

To improve visibility and decision-making, the platform offers customised, role-based dashboards presenting real-time summaries of nursery capacity, planting material availability, bookings, and dispatch status across administrative levels. An online advance booking facility further supports improved production planning and demand forecasting by allowing field units and implementing agencies to book planting material in advance, aligned with plantation schedules.

The system incorporates multi-level, role-based login and access control, aligned with the forest department hierarchy at National, State, Circle, Division, and Range levels. This ensures decentralised data entry, controlled approvals, and secure access across administrative tiers.

FAO has supported the Ministry in building this unique online seed system platform under the FAO Technical Cooperation Project with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare titled, “Support to developing protocols for quality planting material and certification of nurseries for timber and non-timber agroforestry species.” By institutionalising certification standards and quality protocols, the initiative addresses critical gaps identified in the National Agroforestry Policy 2014 and will help in ensuring availability of reliable, certified planting material to farmers and all other stakeholders engaged in afforestation and tree planting activities.

Through close collaboration with the Government of India, FAO continues to bridge technical gaps, strengthen forestry and agroforestry investments, and promote sustainable practices. Harit-SANKALP contributes directly to India’s afforestation initiatives/ programmes, agroforestry, and climate resilience goals by fostering transparency, efficiency, and sustainability across the forestry value chain.