Indian vs Nigerian sesame: how a buyer should compare the two origins.

Why compare Indian and Nigerian sesame at all?

Because a buyer choosing between them is often choosing between two routes to the same seed. India grows sesame at scale, and its Gujarat hulling industry also imports natural seed, Nigerian among it, cleans and hulls it, and ships it onward. A tonne of hulled sesame sold from India may have been grown in Nasarawa.

That makes the comparison less about the plant and more about who does the processing, which regulator's certificate travels with the seed, and which border history the consignment inherits. Our guide to selling Nigerian sesame into India covers the hulling trade in detail. This page covers the comparison a buyer outside India has to make.

How does the EU treat Indian and Nigerian sesame?

Both origins sit in Annex II of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793, the stricter of its two tiers. Annex II means increased official checks at the border, and entry also requires an official certificate from the country of origin or dispatch, sampling-and-analysis results and a CHED. Neither origin enters the EU on a commercial certificate alone.

What differs is the hazard and the frequency.

What happened with ethylene oxide in Indian sesame?

In September 2020 ethylene oxide was notified in sesame seeds from India through RASFF, the EU's rapid alert system. The Commission responded with Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1540, in force from 26 October 2020, which added pesticide residues, checked on half of all consignments, to India's existing Annex II sesame entry for Salmonella (then 20%). The regulation records levels exceeding the EU limit of 0.05 mg/kg by more than a thousandfold.

Since then the pesticide-residue rate has been cut to 20% and the Salmonella rate raised to 30%, the lines in the table. The episode is why India's entry carries a pesticide-residue line at all.

The episode concerned Indian seed. It is not the risk profile of Nigerian sesame, which is microbiological. Our own query of the RASFF Window on 31 July 2026 returned 267 notifications since 2019 naming sesame with Nigeria among the origins: 201 for Salmonella, 43 for documentary or certificate failures, and 3 for ethylene oxide.

So which origin is the safer buy for Europe?

Neither is safe by default, and a page that tells you otherwise is selling. Nigerian seed is checked for Salmonella more often (50% against 30%) and fails mostly on Salmonella and paperwork. Indian seed carries a second, chemical line checked separately at 20%. Both need the official certificate.

What you can control is the same for both: a pre-shipment analysis from an accredited laboratory, run to the destination's limits, on the lot actually shipped, with the Salmonella result and the certificate checked before the bill of lading is released. Our compliance guide sets out the limits per destination.

Looking for an Indian sesame exporter?

If your contract requires Indian-origin seed, you need an Indian exporter, and we are not one. AgroMAX Limited exports Nigerian-origin sesame.

What we are is an Indian-owned exporter of Nigerian sesame. The family behind the company is Indian and our trade desk sits in India, so contracts, documents and correspondence run on Indian business hours, in English, with an India-based desk on the other end of the line. Buyers who search for an Indian exporter are often after exactly that, rather than the origin itself. The contracting company is AgroMAX Limited, registered in Nigeria.

If what you need is hulled seed, note that India's hullers are among the largest buyers of Nigerian natural sesame. Buying Nigerian natural seed to hull yourself, or buying it hulled from us, often means buying the same seed those hullers buy, one step earlier in the chain.

How do you choose between the two?

Start from the contract, not the origin.

1. 01Your customer or your label specifies Indian origin. Buy Indian. Origin is a contract term, and no comparison changes it.
2. 02You are a huller or a crusher buying natural seed on yield. Compare Nigerian natural white on purity, oil content and landed cost. It is what India's own hullers buy.
3. 03You sell into the EU. Budget for the official certificate either way, then compare the 50% Salmonella check rate on Nigerian seed with the 30% Salmonella and 20% pesticide lines on Indian seed.
4. 04You want to deal with an India-based desk and buy Nigerian seed. That is the structure we run.

How current is this page?

The EU positions are read from the consolidated text of Regulation (EU) 2019/1793 applicable from 30 June 2026. Article 12 requires review at intervals of no more than six months, and the next revision is due around December 2026, so confirm the current position at each shipment cycle. The RASFF figures are our own query of the public RASFF Window on 31 July 2026: reproducible, but not official Commission statistics.