Mumbai played host to the Fourth National Workshop on Research and Development in Food Processing Section, an event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in association with the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) recently.
Anaam Sharma, assistant director, FICCI, informed FnB News via telephone, “We adhered to the programme for the event, which had three sessions. This was concurrent to the 6th edition of FICCI Foodworld India 2012 and Annapoorna World of India 2012.”
The first session, chaired by Anuradha Prasad, joint secretary, MoFPI, was titled, 'The power of collaboration works'. The panelists were N C Patel, vice-chancellor, Junagarh Agricultural University; U S Shivhare, director, Central Institute of Post-Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET); Atul Bhatia, executive director, research and development, Kraft Foods Inc., and Srini N, regional innovation entrepreneur, General Mills India Private Ltd.
Patel was the chair for the next session, titled, 'Best practices and open innovation'. The panel comprised C V Natraj, Indian Institute of Science, whose topic was titled, 'Collaboration Models – Dos and Don'ts'; K Alagusundaram, director, Indian Institute of Crop Processing Technology, who presented the next topic; Ramaswamy Anantheswaran, Pennsylvania State University; Samiran Mahapatra, director, open innovation, Hindustan Unilever Limited, who spoke about IP and Open Innovation – Various modes of working, and Vilas Shirhatti, president-technical, Birla Research and Lifesciences Ltd, whose topic was titled, 'Knowledge – How much to own and how much to share?'
The third session was titled, 'Industry-Academia-Government interface – Bedrock for open innovation'. It was chaired by Bhatia and the members of the panel was Raghava Rao, Central Food Technological Research Institute; Smita Lele, professor and head, Institute of Chemical Technology; J Padmaja, assistant director, Food and Drug Toxicology Research Centre, National Institute of Nutrition; Mahapatra; Sudhakar Mhaskar, excutive vice-president and head, technology, consumer products business, Marico, and K D Yadav, senior vice-president – technical, Kamani Oil Industries Pvt Ltd.
