NCDEX agri contracts and Zerodha
The National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange (NCDEX) is India’s principal agri-commodity derivatives exchange, regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India after the September 2015 merger of the Forward Markets Commission into SEBI, and Zerodha does not offer access to it. Zerodha routes commodity futures and options only to the Multi Commodity Exchange and the National Stock Exchange commodity segment, so the NCDEX agri contracts, from guar seed to castor seed, sit entirely outside a Zerodha account.
That gap matters because the two exchanges divide Indian commodity derivatives along a clean line. NCDEX carries the agri complex: oilseeds, pulses, spices, fibres and guar. MCX carries the non-agri complex: bullion, energy and base metals. A trader who wants gold, silver or crude on Kite is served; a trader who wants guar seed or jeera needs a different broker, because Zerodha holds no NCDEX membership.
The second reason this article exists is the SEBI suspension. On 19 December 2021, SEBI suspended derivatives trading in seven agri commodities, paddy (non-basmati), wheat, chana, mustard seed, soybean, crude palm oil and moong, and that suspension has been extended repeatedly. It runs through March 2026 as of this writing, and a SEBI review panel is weighing its removal. Any account of NCDEX agri contracts that ignores the suspension misstates what a trader can actually do.
Conflict-of-interest disclosure. This guide is published by the WebNotes Editorial Team for informational purposes and is written independently. WebNotes operates a Zerodha account-opening referral programme, disclosed on the pages that carry the referral link; this guide does not carry it and earns no referral commission from the procedure described here.
Whether Zerodha offers NCDEX
Zerodha’s commodity offering covers two exchanges, MCX and the NSE commodity segment, and NCDEX is not one of them. Zerodha’s own support documentation lists the commodity exchanges it connects to, and NCDEX does not appear. A Zerodha commodity account places futures and options on bullion, energy and base metals through MCX, and the small set of commodity contracts NSE lists, but it cannot route an order to NCDEX because Zerodha is not a trading member there.
This is a membership fact, not a settings toggle. An exchange order can only be placed by a member of that exchange or through a member. Zerodha holds membership of MCX and NSE on the commodity side. It does not hold NCDEX membership, so no Zerodha client can reach the NCDEX order book regardless of account type. Contacting support will not enable it, the same way it cannot enable trading on an exchange the broker has never joined.
The practical consequence: a guar-seed or castor-seed trader who runs the rest of their book on Zerodha must open a second commodity account with an NCDEX member to trade those contracts. Several brokers carry NCDEX membership, and the agri-trading community concentrates there. Zerodha’s design choice to stay on the bullion-energy-metals side reflects where retail commodity volume sits; MCX dwarfs NCDEX by turnover, and the agri side has been shrunk further by the SEBI suspension covered below.
For the Zerodha trader, the takeaway is narrow. Everything on the Zerodha F&O segment commodity side, gold, gold mini, silver, silver micro, crude oil, natural gas, copper, zinc, aluminium, lead, nickel, comes through MCX. None of it touches NCDEX. The Zerodha commodity brokerage page documents the charge structure for those MCX contracts; NCDEX charges never enter the picture because the route does not exist.
What NCDEX is and how it sits beside MCX
NCDEX was incorporated in 2003 and commenced operations in December 2003, weeks after MCX opened in November 2003. The two were licensed under the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1952, regulated then by the Forward Markets Commission, and both passed under SEBI when the Finance Act 2015 merged the FMC into SEBI and amended the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956, to bring commodity derivatives within the definition of securities.
The product split was structural from the start. NCDEX built its franchise on agriculture: oilseeds (soybean, mustard, castor), pulses (chana, moong), spices (jeera, dhaniya, turmeric), fibres (cotton, cottonseed oilcake) and guar (seed and gum). MCX built its franchise on bullion, energy and base metals. The split serves different hedging constituencies. NCDEX price-discovery serves farmers, traders, processors and the agricultural value chain; MCX serves jewellers, refiners, oil marketers and industrial metal users.
| Attribute | NCDEX | MCX |
|---|---|---|
| Commenced operations | December 2003 | November 2003 |
| Principal commodities | Agri: oilseeds, pulses, spices, fibres, guar | Bullion, energy, base metals |
| Regulator | SEBI (post-2015 FMC merger) | SEBI (post-2015 FMC merger) |
| Index futures | AGRIDEX (agri commodity index) | Sectoral indices (bullion, metals, energy) |
| Available on Zerodha | No | Yes |
NCDEX also lists AGRIDEX, an agri commodity index whose futures give a basket exposure across the agri complex rather than a single commodity. The exchange has sought to diversify beyond agri-only trading; reporting through FY2025-26 noted NCDEX securing in-principle SEBI approval to enter an equity and equity-derivatives segment, a direct response to revenue pressure from the agri suspension.
The main NCDEX agri contracts
The live NCDEX agri set, the contracts not caught by the SEBI suspension, centres on a handful of names that still carry meaningful open interest.
Guar seed and guar gum are the most distinctive NCDEX contracts. Guar is grown mainly in Rajasthan, and guar gum is a globally traded industrial input used as a thickening agent and, materially for price, in hydraulic-fracturing fluid for US shale-oil drilling. That second use links guar gum prices to international energy activity, so the contract responds to both the Indian monsoon and the US shale cycle, an unusual cross-sensitivity for an agri commodity.
Castor seed is another NCDEX mainstay, India being the dominant global producer of castor, with the crop concentrated in Gujarat. Cottonseed oilcake (kapas khali), jeera (cumin), dhaniya (coriander) and turmeric round out the actively traded spices and oilseed-complex contracts. Each carries its own contract specification, delivery centre and warehouse-receipt mechanism, with delivery anchored to NCDEX-accredited warehouses and the exchange’s deliverable-supply assessment.
The contracts that defined NCDEX volume before December 2021, soybean, mustard (rapeseed) and chana, are precisely the ones the SEBI suspension took out. NCDEX generated the bulk of its agri turnover on those names, which is why the exchange was, in its own filings and in market reporting, the most affected venue when the suspension landed.
The SEBI suspension of seven agri derivatives
On 19 December 2021, SEBI directed exchanges to suspend trading in derivatives on seven agri commodities for one year. The list covers paddy (non-basmati), wheat, chana, mustard seed and its derivatives, soybean and its derivatives, crude palm oil and moong. The order did not force open positions to liquidate immediately on day one, but it barred the launch of new contracts in those commodities, which over the following months wound the segment down to nil.
The stated rationale was food-price inflation. The suspension came during a period of elevated retail food inflation, and the policy theory was that derivatives speculation was adding to spot-price pressure in essential agri commodities. SEBI extended the one-year order repeatedly: through December 2023, then December 2024, then a short extension to 31 January 2025, and onward, with the suspension running through March 2026 as of mid-2026.
The empirical basis for the link between futures trading and food inflation is contested by the research SEBI’s own ecosystem cites. An RBI study of Indian commodity futures concluded that Indian commodity prices are driven more by the demand-supply gap, import dependence and international price movements than by futures activity. The 2008 committee under economist Abhijit Sen found no evidence that spot-price volatility was caused by futures trading. NCDEX and the broker associations have submitted to the Finance Ministry that prolonged bans damage the commodity-market ecosystem and India’s ease-of-doing-business perception. Studies cited in that debate found that retail agri prices did not ease after the suspension, and that volatility rose in several of the affected commodities.
Current status and the review
As of mid-2026 the suspension remains in force, scheduled through March 2026, with the direction of travel pointing toward review rather than indefinite continuation. A SEBI panel constituted under Chairman Tuhin Kanta Pandey, who took charge in March 2025, has been examining the framework. Reporting in 2026 indicated the panel was expected to recommend lifting the ban on several of the suspended commodities, including paddy, wheat and crude palm oil, with SEBI’s management said to favour resumption. A stakeholder meeting on 1 July 2025, chaired by the SEBI Chairman, brought in exchanges, brokers, clearing corporations and Farmer Producer Organisations, and led to two working groups tasked with identifying the roadblocks to reviving agri derivatives. No formal removal had been notified by mid-2026.
What the suspension means for a Zerodha trader specifically
For a Zerodha client, the suspension is mostly academic, because the suspended commodities trade on NCDEX, which Zerodha does not offer in the first place. A Zerodha commodity trader was never going to place a soybean or chana order on Kite, so the suspension neither opened nor closed a door for them.
The one connection worth stating: the suspension does not touch MCX bullion, energy and base metals, which is the entire commodity universe a Zerodha client actually trades. Crude oil, natural gas, gold, silver and the base metals on the Zerodha F&O charges sheet are outside the suspended list and trade on a normal schedule. A Zerodha trader reading about an agri-derivatives suspension should not infer any restriction on their MCX positions; the two are separate.
If the suspension is lifted and a Zerodha client wants exposure to the revived agri contracts, the constraint reverts to the membership point above. Even with the agri derivatives back, a Zerodha account still cannot reach NCDEX, so trading them would require a second account with an NCDEX member. The lifting of the suspension changes what is tradeable on NCDEX; it does not change which exchanges Zerodha connects to.
Margins, charges and tax on the commodity side
On the MCX contracts a Zerodha client can trade, margins run on the SPAN-plus-exposure framework. The SPAN margin on Zerodha is the exchange-computed initial margin, and the exposure margin on Zerodha is the additional buffer on top, both visible on the Zerodha margin calculator before placing a trade. Commodity F&O margins are typically lower than equity F&O margins per unit of underlying value, which is part of why bullion mini and micro contracts draw retail interest.
Tax treatment for commodity-derivative business income follows Section 43(5)(e) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 , which classifies it as non-speculative business income where the Commodity Transaction Tax is paid, set off against other business income and carried forward for eight years. The F&O taxation in India reference covers both equity and commodity derivatives, and Section 44AB governs the tax-audit threshold. None of this changes by exchange; an NCDEX trade and an MCX trade are taxed on the same statutory basis, even though only one of them is reachable on Zerodha.
See also
- Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX)
- Multi Commodity Exchange
- Commodity Transaction Tax
- Commodity trading in India
- Zerodha
- Kite by Zerodha
- Zerodha F&O segment
- Zerodha commodity brokerage
- Zerodha F&O charges
- SPAN margin on Zerodha
- Exposure margin on Zerodha
- SEBI
- National Stock Exchange
- Bombay Stock Exchange
- Futures and options
- F&O trading
- F&O taxation in India
- Section 44AB
- Income tax in India
- Capital gains tax in India
- Crude oil futures
- Gold futures
- How to trade gold mini futures on Zerodha
- How to trade silver micro futures on Zerodha
- How to trade futures on Kite (first time)
- MCX vs international price disparity
- MCX agri trading restrictions
- Agri position limits on Zerodha
- Stamp duty stockbroker
External references
- Securities and Exchange Board of India
- National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange
- Multi Commodity Exchange of India
- Zerodha commodities
- Zerodha support: commodity trading
References
- SEBI directive suspending derivatives trading in seven agri commodities (paddy non-basmati, wheat, chana, mustard seed, soybean, crude palm oil, moong), 19 December 2021, and subsequent extensions through March 2026.
- Finance Act, 2015, merger of the Forward Markets Commission into SEBI and amendment of the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956.
- National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange, contract specifications and the AGRIDEX methodology document.
- Zerodha support documentation on commodity trading and the exchanges available to Zerodha commodity accounts (as of June 2026).
- Income Tax Act, 1961, Section 43(5)(e) (non-speculative classification of commodity-derivative business income).