Indian farmers are likely to grow more oilseeds in the winter crop season beginning this month from a year earlier, boosted by robust oilseed prices, traders and industry officials said.

"Definitely the area will go up. With oilseed prices ruling up, farmers will be tempted to allot more land for the crop," Bipin V Patel, president of the Solvent Extractors' Association of India, said in Rajkot.

India, the world's largest edible oil importer, grows oilseeds on about 25 million hectares of land. Output in the winter season, sown in June-July and reaped in November, adds 60 to 70 per cent to the total output.

Traders said a rise in the area may lead to an increase in the winter output from 9.72 million tonnes a year earlier.

Domestic prices of most oilseeds were 20 to 30 per cent higher in 2002-03 (November-October) from the previous year due to a sharp decline in local output following poor rains.

Oilseed output, including summer production, fell over 20 per cent from a year ago to 16.13 million tonnes in the current year, according to trade estimates.

Patel said farmers would be induced to sow more groundnut, rapeseed and soybean because of the attractive prices these crops fetched last year, but did not give any estimate.

G G Patel, managing partner of oil trading firm Dipak Enterprises, said farmers in north India were expected to shift to oilseeds from grains.

India has been making efforts in recent years to encourage farmers to shift to oilseed production from rice and wheat, in which it has excess stocks. It imports nearly half of its edible oil demand of more than 10 million tonnes a year.