Agriculture and food processing minister Sharad Pawar is scheduled to inaugurate NIFTEM, a food processing institute at Kundli, Haryana, on November 7.
Apart from Pawar, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and a number of union and state ministers are likely to be present at the event.
NIFTEM or the National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurship and Management has been conferred deemed university status. The institute will begun its first academic session this summer. It will confer B Tech (food technology and management), M Tech and Ph D (food technology and management).
One important aspect of its functioning is that it has ‘theme centres’ on different sectors such as dairying, cereal-based products, animal protein, beverages, confectionery, and fruit- and vegetable-based foods. There are also themes cutting across these sectors, e.g. management, packaging, food standards and testing.
NIFTEM is expected to work actively in setting food standards, businesses incubation and information sharing. It would be an apex institution in the field of food technology and management and would coordinate its various activities with other institutions in this area.
Further, it would actively collaborate with the world’s best institutions to promote development of path-breaking technologies, which are globally relevant. This will help NIFTEM become an international centre of excellence.
