Who buys mustard seed, and in what quantity

Trade in mustard seed under HS 1207.50, 2024:

On the export side Canada is dominant: 93,415 tonnes worth USD 150.22 million, close to half the value of the entire top ten. Germany follows at USD 33.88 million, Ukraine at USD 27.78 million, Poland at USD 22.22 million, and India fifth at 24,275 tonnes worth USD 19.97 million.

Read the unit values before you read the rankings

The unit value column is doing more work here than the volume column. Poland imports at USD 0.53/kg and Germany at USD 0.86/kg, while the Netherlands imports at USD 1.59/kg and Japan at USD 2.02/kg. Those are not the same purchase. The low-unit-value flows are bulk seed moving in for crushing, grinding and condiment manufacture; the high-unit-value flows are graded, cleaned, food-grade seed sold on specification.

Germany illustrates it in one line: it imports at USD 0.86/kg and exports at USD 1.74/kg. Poland imports at USD 0.53/kg and exports at USD 1.11/kg. Both are buying raw and selling finished.

And our own position, stated plainly: India exports at about USD 0.82/kg, against Canada at about USD 1.61/kg. We are the low-cost origin in mustard, not the quality benchmark. Canada is the quality benchmark, by volume, by value and by the breadth of what it can supply. Where we compete is price, organic group certification at scale, and Brassica juncea specifically. Where we do not compete is yellow mustard — see below.

Mustard is not rapeseed, and the difference is the whole specification

These two crops are related, are traded under adjacent customs headings and are routinely spoken about in the same breath. Treating them as interchangeable is the most expensive mistake available in this commodity.

Rapeseed under HS 1205 is a much larger trade, dominated by Canadian, Australian and Ukrainian supply into the EU, China and Japan. The bulk of it is canola: rapeseed bred down to very low erucic acid and low glucosinolate, specifically so that the oil behaves like a neutral commodity oil. India is a net importer of rapeseed oil rather than a meaningful exporter of the seed, so it is not what we supply and this guide does not pretend otherwise.

Mustard under HS 1207.50 is the opposite crop in the two respects that matter. It is grown for its glucosinolates, because the glucosinolates are the pungency, and nobody has bred the erucic acid out of the commercial seed because mustard is bought by the spoonful as a condiment, not by the litre as a cooking oil.

A contract that says “mustard seed” and nothing else is not a specification. Yellow and brown mustard are not substitutes: one gives you a stable, mild, emulsifying ingredient, the other gives you volatile heat that dissipates with time and temperature. Write the botanical name into the specification.

India grows Brassica juncea — rai and sarson. That is what we can supply well. If your product needs Sinapis alba, Canada is the origin to talk to, and we would rather tell you that at enquiry stage than quote you something that does not fit.

Erucic acid: the limit mustard has to itself

Erucic acid is a long-chain monounsaturated fatty acid that the EU restricts in food. The relevant maximum levels come from Regulation (EU) 2019/1870, now consolidated in Regulation (EU) 2023/915.

Read the second line again

Mustard oil keeps a limit two and a half times higher than ordinary vegetable oils. That is not a concession won by lobbying. The stated reason is that for these three oils, reduction through good manufacturing practice is not possible — the erucic acid is intrinsic to the seed, not a processing artefact. The regulator has written the plant’s biology into the law, and the carve-out exists because the alternative would be to ban the product.

The supporting figure is stark: the seed oils of all three mustard species contain over 30 per cent erucic acid as a proportion of total fatty acids. Canola, by contrast, is bred to a small fraction of that.

So if a buyer comes to us having read that rapeseed is low in erucic acid and assumes organic mustard will be too, the assumption is backwards twice over. Mustard is the high-erucic crop, and organic certification does nothing about it, because erucic acid is a varietal and genetic property, not an input. NPOP, the USDA National Organic Program and Regulation (EU) 2018/848 are all silent on it, as they are silent on arsenic in rice and cadmium in flaxseed, and for the same reason: they govern what may be applied, not what the plant makes.

Low-erucic Brassica juncea lines of canola quality have been developed in a few countries. They exist. They are not what the Indian commercial crop is, and anyone who needs one should specify it explicitly and expect to pay for it.

Mustard is a declarable allergen, and organic says nothing about that

Mustard is one of the fourteen substances listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that must be declared on EU food labels. It sits alongside cereals containing gluten, crustaceans, eggs, fish, peanuts, soybeans, milk, nuts, celery, sesame, sulphites, lupin and molluscs.

Organic certification has nothing to say about allergen management. It is worth being precise about why. NPOP, NOP and Regulation (EU) 2018/848 require segregation — but the segregation they require is of organic from conventional. A line that is perfectly compliant on that axis, with a validated changeover between conventional and organic runs, may have no allergen control at all between one organic commodity and the next.

That is the gap, and in a multi-commodity organic cleaning and grading operation it is a real one. Sesame is also on the Annex II list. So is a facility that cleans organic sesame on Monday and organic mustard on Tuesday running an allergen risk that its organic certificate does not touch? Yes, unless it has a separate allergen management programme, and the organic auditor is not the person who will check.

Pungency: how to specify what you are actually buying

Mustard’s heat comes from glucosinolates hydrolysing when the seed is crushed in the presence of water. In Brassica juncea the relevant compound is sinigrin, and hydrolysis yields allyl isothiocyanate, reported at up to about 1.4 per cent. Total glucosinolate content across mustard species can reach around 200 µmol per gram of seed, with wide variation.

In finished table mustards, AITC has been reported from 4 to above 200 mg per 100 g fresh weight, and EFSA has documented levels up to 15,000 mg/kg in mustard products. For reference, EFSA has set an acceptable daily intake for AITC of 20 µg per kg of body weight, which works out at about 1.4 mg per day for a 70 kg adult.

We include that last figure because it is relevant to anyone formulating a product with a high-pungency specification, and because it is not widely discussed in the trade. It is not a reason to avoid mustard. It is a reason to know your AITC number rather than specifying “hot”.

Practically: specify glucosinolate or AITC content with the method, and specify it on the seed as delivered rather than on a historical average for the variety. Pungency is also lost in storage and with heat, so where the heat is the product, agree whether the specification applies at shipment or on arrival — the same clause we recommend for volatile oil in fennel and curcumin in turmeric.

GM mustard: where India actually stands

This matters to organic buyers more than almost anything else in this article, because an organic claim and a GM presence cannot coexist.

The position today is that commercial cultivation of GM mustard is not permitted in India. The route there was contested and is not finished:

• 18 and 25 October 2022 — the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee and the environment ministry approved the environmental release of DMH-11, a herbicide-tolerant hybrid mustard.
• November 2022 — the Supreme Court ordered status quo, holding the release.
• 23 July 2024 — a two-judge bench delivered a split verdict in Gene Campaign v. Union of India. Justice Nagarathna quashed the approvals, finding the GEAC had relied on foreign research, ignored indigenous studies and disregarded a 2012 expert committee report. Justice Karol upheld the approval subject to conditions, holding the GEAC to be an expert body whose decision was not arbitrary.
• Both judges agreed that GEAC decisions are open to judicial review, that the Centre must frame a national GM crop policy with stakeholder consultation, and that GM food imports including GM edible oil must meet FSSAI labelling requirements.
• The split means no operative outcome. The matter was placed before the Chief Justice for a larger bench, and release remains on hold.

For a buyer, the honest reading is this. India’s mustard crop being non-GM is a real advantage today, and it is a cleaner starting point than origins where GM brassicas are widely grown. But it rests on a contested legal position that a larger bench may revisit, not on a settled prohibition. Write non-GM testing and documentation into the contract now, specify the detection method and the threshold you require, and do not rely on the current position holding indefinitely. We would rather you had that protection in writing than take our word for a court case neither of us controls.

Specification: what to write into the contract

The three layers of organic paperwork

Where our mustard comes from

Indian mustard is a rabi crop grown across the northern and western plains — Rajasthan is the largest producing state, with Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat also significant. Gujarat is a producing state, which puts mustard in the same category as our fennel rather than our turmeric: a crop grown in our own state as well as elsewhere, though the bulk of the national crop sits north of us in Rajasthan.

As with every commodity in this series, ask us which district and which producer group, and ask the same of anyone else quoting you. An exporter who answers “India” is describing a market, not a supply chain.

Organic is not an analytical zero

Organic certification governs what may be applied. It does not promise that nothing will ever be detected.

Drift from neighbouring conventional plots, carry-over on shared drying yards, shared cleaning and grading lines and shared transport all produce low-level detections in genuinely organic material. On a positive result the question is not “is this organic?” but “at what concentration, and is that concentration consistent with carry-over or with application?” Carry-over sits in parts per billion. A result in parts per million is a traceability question.

For mustard, add the two items above that organic never covered in the first place. Erucic acid will be there because the plant makes it. Mustard protein will be detectable wherever mustard has been handled. Neither is a failure of the organic system; both are outside it.

What to ask before you place the order

1. The species, named botanically, and the variety.
2. Erucic acid as a percentage of total fatty acids on the delivered lot, by gas chromatography.
3. Glucosinolate or AITC content with the method, and whether the figure applies at shipment or on arrival.
4. The allergen management programme, and the cleaning or changeover records for the run that produced your lot.
5. Non-GM documentation, with the testing method and threshold written into the contract rather than assumed.
6. The NPOP transaction certificate for the specific lot, verified directly with the certifying body.
7. District and producer group.
8. For the United States: the NOP Import Certificate, raised before the goods move.

Frequently asked questions

Is organic mustard seed low in erucic acid like canola?

No, and this is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in the commodity. Canola is rapeseed bred down to very low erucic acid. Mustard is a different crop: the seed oils of Sinapis alba, Brassica juncea and Brassica nigra all contain over 30 per cent erucic acid as a share of total fatty acids. Organic certification is a process standard governing inputs; erucic acid is a genetic trait of the variety. Buying organic does not lower it. Buying a low-erucic variety does.

What are the EU maximum levels for erucic acid?

Under Regulation (EU) 2019/1870, now consolidated in Regulation (EU) 2023/915, vegetable oils and fats placed on the market for the final consumer or for use as a food ingredient carry a maximum of 20 g/kg, reduced from the earlier 50 g/kg. Camelina oil, mustard oil and borage oil keep the 50 g/kg level, on the explicit basis that reduction through good manufacturing practice is not possible for them. Mustard as a condiment has its own level of 35 g/kg.

Is mustard an allergen, and does organic certification cover it?

Mustard is one of the 14 substances listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that must be declared on EU food labels. Organic certification has nothing to say about allergen management: NPOP, the USDA National Organic Program and Regulation (EU) 2018/848 are process standards for inputs and segregation of organic from conventional, not for allergen cross-contact. A certified organic cleaning line that handles mustard and sesame on the same equipment is an allergen risk that no organic certificate addresses.

What is the difference between yellow, brown and black mustard?

Sinapis alba, yellow or white mustard, carries sinalbin, which yields 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate and gives a milder, non-volatile pungency. Brassica juncea, brown or oriental mustard, and Brassica nigra, black mustard, carry sinigrin, which hydrolyses to allyl isothiocyanate and gives the sharp volatile heat. India grows Brassica juncea. A contract that says only “mustard seed”, without the species, is not a specification, because the two deliver different flavour chemistry and suit different products.

Is Indian mustard genetically modified?

Commercial cultivation of GM mustard is not permitted in India at present. GEAC and the environment ministry approved the environmental release of DMH-11 on 18 and 25 October 2022; the Supreme Court ordered status quo in November 2022 and delivered a split verdict on 23 July 2024, with one judge quashing the approval and one upholding it. The matter was referred for a larger bench and release remains on hold. Because this is a contested legal position rather than a settled one, write non-GM testing and documentation into your contract now rather than relying on the current position.

• No, and this is the most common and most expensive misunderstanding in the commodity. Canola is rapeseed bred down to very low erucic acid. Mustard is a different crop: the seed oils of Sinapis alba, Brassica juncea and Brassica nigra all contain over 30 per cent erucic acid as a share of total fatty acids. Organic certification is a process standard governing inputs; erucic acid is a genetic trait of the variety. Buying organic does not lower it. Buying a low-erucic variety does.
• Under Regulation (EU) 2019/1870, now consolidated in Regulation (EU) 2023/915, vegetable oils and fats placed on the market for the final consumer or for use as a food ingredient carry a maximum of 20 g/kg, reduced from the earlier 50 g/kg. Camelina oil, mustard oil and borage oil keep the 50 g/kg level, on the explicit basis that reduction through good manufacturing practice is not possible for them. Mustard as a condiment has its own level of 35 g/kg.
• Mustard is one of the 14 substances listed in Annex II to Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 that must be declared on EU food labels. Organic certification has nothing to say about allergen management: NPOP, the USDA National Organic Program and Regulation (EU) 2018/848 are process standards for inputs and segregation of organic from conventional, not for allergen cross-contact. A certified organic cleaning line that handles mustard and sesame on the same equipment is an allergen risk that no organic certificate addresses.
• Sinapis alba, yellow or white mustard, carries sinalbin, which yields 4-hydroxybenzyl isothiocyanate and gives a milder, non-volatile pungency. Brassica juncea, brown or oriental mustard, and Brassica nigra, black mustard, carry sinigrin, which hydrolyses to allyl isothiocyanate and gives the sharp volatile heat. India grows Brassica juncea. A contract that says only “mustard seed”, without the species, is not a specification, because the two deliver different flavour chemistry and suit different products.

Why these five languages. English for the United States at number one, which at USD 84.22 million buys more than twice the next market, and for Canada at number five. German for Germany at number two and Switzerland at number ten. Dutch for the Netherlands at number three and Belgium at number eight. Polish for Poland at number four. Japanese for Japan at number six, which pays the second-highest unit value in the table. Between them these five cover eight of the top ten importing markets.