Buyers often contract on variety name alone. The parameters that decide whether a lot performs are milled length, moisture and broken percentage.
A surprising number of basmati contracts are written against a variety name and nothing else. That is enough to start a conversation and nowhere near enough to guarantee what lands at the destination port.
The parameters that matter
Average milled length. This is the headline number. 1121 sella should measure 8.30mm minimum after milling. A lot averaging 8.05mm is not 1121 in commercial terms, whatever the seed was.
Moisture. Above 13% and you are shipping water and inviting mould in a hot container. We hold sella at 12.5% maximum.
Broken percentage. Parboiled grain resists breakage, which is exactly why sella dominates long-haul trade. Raw milled basmati is more fragile and should be contracted with a wider broken tolerance.
What matters less than buyers think
Aroma is real but it is not a contractable parameter — there is no accepted numeric scale for it, and it fades measurably over the first few months of storage. Contract on the measurable things and treat aroma as a characteristic of the variety.
Practical advice
Write the specification into the contract with numbers, ask for a pre-shipment sample drawn from the actual lot, and retain it. If a dispute arises later, the retained sample is what settles it.