CFTRI Director inaugurates two-day event

Mysore/Mysuru: A two-day “Stakeholders workshop on grain storage and pest management” organised in collaboration with UPL Ltd., Mumbai, by CSIR-Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR- CFTRI), Mysuru, was held at CFTRI here on Aug. 17 and 18.

About 80 participants including farmers, grain storage and other industry personnel, research scholars and professionals attended the workshop. Eminent speakers from representative organisations presented technical lectures on the preservation, fumigation and organic protection of food grains.

The lectures were followed by practical demonstrations on effective grain fumigation and hermetic as well as Controlled Atmosphere(CA) storage techniques for the benefit of farmers and grain storage agencies.

Inaugurating the workshop, Dr. Sridevi Annapurna Singh, Director, CSIR-CFTRI, said that 12 to 16 million metric tons of food grains are  lost each year in India and highlighted the need for adaptation of latest technologies in protecting grains such as wheat, paddy/rice, maize, etc., from the ravages of insect pests from farm to fork.

A compendium on biology of stored product insects and their management was released during the inaugural function by CFTRI Director.

Dr. Prakash M. Halami, Chief Scientist and Head of Food Protectants and Infestation Control Department, CFTRI, talked about the objectives, significance of the workshop and future challenges in pest management. He also spoke about the collaboration of CSIR-CFTRI with UPL and several initiatives taken by the Department of Food Protectant and Infestation Control in adapting advancements in R&D.

FCI’s role in food security

Ravi Kumar Sinha, Dy. General Manager (QC), Food Corporation of India (FCI), New Delhi, gave detailed information about the role of FCI in food storage and management and explained the current grain preservation practices in FCI.

The current prophylactic and control measures taken by FCI are chemical-based methods and therefore he urged the expert from the field for alternate chemicals and phytocompounds for usage. He assured required assistance from FCI personnel for the trial of new methods at the FCI facilities.

In addition, the use of phosphine as an alternative fumigant in Quarantine and Pre-shipment (QPS) applications was presented by Dr. Sumitra Arora, Principal Scientist, ICAR-NCIPM, New Delhi, supported with elaborate laboratory and field data.

Dr. Alice R. P. Sujeetha, Director (PBD), NIPHM, Hyderabad, explained various bio-security threats faced by the nation from alien sources.

Integrated Pest Management

 Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a pest control approach based on combinations of various techniques which are environmental friendly and effective. Prof. S. Mohan, Retired Professor, TNAU, Coimbatore, highlighted different indigenous insect pest detection and monitoring devices for use at rural and large-scale grain storage centres and elaborated the devices which were patented, designed and manufactured by him.

Prof. M. Loganathan, Director(I/C), NIFTEM, Thanjavur, discussed about non-chemical methods for insect pest management in grain storage. The Scientists from CFTRI spoke about new trends in mitigating mycotoxins in stored grains and ways to address the issue, the potential of phytocompounds for food grain and seed protection and  safety aspects of packaging materials and grain storage bags.

‘Dana Dana Kimati Hai’ campaign

Ujjwal Kumar, Business Head, UPL Ltd., proposed their campaign ‘Dana Dana Kimati Hai’ to reduce the food loss by infestation during storage. Dr. S. Rajendran, Technical consultant of UPL Ltd., enlightened about the safety precautions related to phosphine fumigation. Regulations related to grain fumigation and export were discussed by Rajneesh Kumar, Technical Advisor, UPL Ltd.

The principles and benefits of pest and pesticide-free hermetic storage of grain were highlighted by Thess Enriquez, Continent management-Asia Pacific GrainPro Ltd. and Praveen Gupta, Country Manager, GrainPro Ltd., Noida.

Demo on fumigation and hermetic storage

 The importance of gas monitoring during fumigation and different equipment available for the same was elaborated by Rahul Singh, Vice-President (Business), UPL Ltd. The experts from UPL demonstrated phosphine fumigation for bulk and farm storage. As part of the workshop, onsite live demonstration of fumigation process for storage of food grains was conducted by UPL and GrainPro. In addition, a demonstration was conducted on hermetic methods of grain storage. The hermetic storage of grains was explained and demonstrated by experts.

Farmers to be stakeholders

Towards the end of the workshop, a panel discussion was organised amongst various stakeholders and experts of the field. The participants  also expressed that such kind of programmes need to be conducted at the village-level to bring more awareness and scientific method of grain storage. Most of the farmer participants requested CFTRI and UPL to undertake  further farmer-friendly training programme in the near future.