Various technologies developed at the NDRI campuses in Karnal and Bengaluru were presented to industry representatives at a meet held earlier this month. In all, 54 persons representing 30 companies, including Dodla Dairy, ITC, Britannia Industries, Heritage Foods and HatsunAgro, among others, participated in it.
Some of the areas identified for further work are improvement of initial quality of milk at collection, utilisation of concentrated milk for reconstitution and recombination purposes, effective application of membrane technology, conversion of old powder plants into agglomerated powder plants and restriction of the use of sugar in dairy products.
In addition, other potential projects identified included development of energy-efficient equipment, enhancement of shelf life of paneer possibly by up to 30 days, accelerated test for determining sterility of ultra-high temperature (UHT) milk to avoid incubation time, rapid tests for estimating FSSAI parameters, fixing of standards for traditional sweets, development of strip test for detection of preservatives in liquid milk and educating farmers and middlemen not to adulterate milk supplies.
Sunil Reddy, managing director, Dodla Dairy, Hyderabad, was the chief guest, while Sanjay Singal, chief operational officer, ITC Bengaluru, was the guest of honour. R R B Singh, director, ICAR-NDRI, presided over the inaugural programme. Bimlesh Mann, acting joint director, research, and K P Ramesha, head, ICAR-NDRI, Bengaluru, were also present.
Reddy lauded the efforts of the dairy institutes, stating that the technologies should be offered to industry as a package, including manufacture methods, packaging, cost-effectiveness and market opportunities.
Singal highlighted the efforts being put in by ITC to introduce new products and sought collaboration with NDRI in their endeavours.
Singh assured the industry that NDRI would be pragmatic in its approach in dealing with industry and wanted more collaborative approaches instead of working in an isolated manner. He assured the industry that NDRI would direct its research projects to be conducted in a more industry-friendly manner.
S Ayyappan, chair professor, National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), explained the importance of transfer of technology. The inaugural session ended with the vote of thanks, proposed by K Jayaraj Rao, principal scientist, dairy technology, ICAR-NDRI, Bengaluru.
A panel of experts highlighted on the labeling issues, FSSAI standards and product development challenges. There was an open house interaction between the industry representatives and the institute’s scientists, where issues raised by the former were clarified by the latter.
Stating that NDRI was already working to sort out the several issues raised by the industry, Singh urged industry to come forward to collaborate.
Participants gave feedback, stating that a month-long short-term training course was also needed for the fresh engineers, quality control personnel, veterinary assistants and other dairy professionals to make them industry-ready.
The training should also encompass FSSAI, Codex, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) standards.
The institute-industry meet concluded with the vote of thanks, proposed by P K Dixit, principal scientist, dairy economics and statistics section, ICAR-NDRI, Bengaluru.
