How about using coconut milk to make tea, coffee and shakes? It is a possibility, going by research currently on at the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute, Kasaragod, Kerala.
“Initial experiments have shown encouraging results. We hope to introduce coconut milk as a substitute for dairy milk,” P. Chowdappa, Director of the institute, told The Hindu .
He said the institute had made vanilla and chocolate shakes with coconut milk. “I have had all, even tea and coffee, and they taste very good,” he said.
He said the new use of coconut milk would help small and marginal farmers, as sale of the raw nuts alone would not be profitable for them. The value addition, part of the institute’s continuing research, would help. Coconut chips, virgin oil, neera and snowball tender coconut had earlier come out of its research pipeline.
Referring to the research in the coconut sector, he said more focus was being given to developing tissue-cultured palms.
Though the institute developed three varieties of palms tolerant to root wilt disease common in Kerala, farmers could not be supplied enough seedlings because fewer mother palms were available. Hence, the focus on tissue-cultured palms.
