Overview:
Indian food industry is ever growing. India is the second largest producer of food next to China with an estimated food processing industry size at US$ 70 billion. The progress of food industry is highly getting hampered by Post-harvest losses which is considered to be a major challenge in fruit and vegetable industry that obstructs in materializing the dream of doubling farmer’s income and SDG goals.
It is disheartening that every year substantial produce lost which directly or indirectly affecting farmers, and small retailers. According to research report more than 30-50% fruits and vegetables (doi: 10.6084/M9.FIGSHARE.3206851) lost in postharvest in India. On other hand countries like USA,China, Europe are far ahead of India in reducing the wastage by enhancing the value addition and shelf-life of the farm produces. Economic times and Times of India report depict that, in year 2017-18, India produced 283 million tonnes food grain while fruits and vegetables crossed 300 million tonnes, however, there was high substantial deficit of 20-25% deficit in per capita availability due to post harvest losses from farm to fork.
Post-harvest losses are adversely affecting the Indian economy. It is very much astonishing to know the fact that India incurs economic drain of Rs 2.4 trillion in fruit and veggies per annum due to lack of proper technologies in postharvest processes like storage and transportation. Among the states, it is noted that post-harvest losses are maximum in West Bengal (Rs 13,657 crore) followed by Gujarat (Rs 11,400 crore), Bihar (Rs 10,700 crore) and Uttar Pradesh (Rs 10,300 crore). Right from Picking, storage, transportation, and distributing into retailer outlet and till reaching consumer levels the postharvest losses are enormous at each point.
The cost of fruits are going up to cover the damage into consideration hence people are unable to effort, hence we need cheaper, safer technologies to enhance shelf-life of fruits. Keeping this in mind our research team started to search the best solution for this issue since several years. With extensive research we developed safe, self-sustainable systems for safe storage of fruits, vegetables and other perishable items like fresh mushrooms. We developed several systems called shelf-life enhancers which have already been validated at the lab and field levels. Now the Technology is ready for market. The innovation is led by Dr. Jagadis Gupta Kapuganti, scientist V, NIPGR, Delhi, BIG BIRAC Innovator at FITT, ITT Delhi. He founded FRUVETECH in 2021 which is BIRAC supported and recognized by Startup India.