The Banana Research Station (BRS) at Kannara in Thrissur district, functioning under the Kerala Agricultural University, has opened a post-harvest handling and value addition centre to minimise losses of the produce and to help boost production.
Minimising post-harvest loss of bananas, which provides food and nutritional security to more than 400 million people globally, was a challenge, said Dr. R.Chandra Babu, Vice-Chancellor, KAU.
“The value addition technologies developed at BRS, Kannara, can mitigate this challenge. The new propagation technique and other programmes to boost productivity also augurs well for the farming fraternity,” he said.
The research station has developed 100-odd products using green and ripe bananas as well as other edible parts such as the pseudo-stem, rhizome, and the male bud, which are usually wasted. About 20 products have been commercialised, produced on a large scale and marketed. Products such as pseudo-stem juice, banana halwa, cake, cookies, pickles, jam, ice-cream, jelly, and fruit juice have very good demand.
The station has opened an entrepreneurship development centre with the support of ICAR – AICRP (Fruits) – SCSP scheme. The centre will train Scheduled Caste women and help them establish start-ups with the help of the Agriculture Department, VFPCK, and Kudumbashree Mission.
“We have selected three talented women from the Scheduled Caste community and engaged them in processing and value addition activities for assisting in the training of entrepreneurs,” said Dr. P.B. Pushpalatha, Professor and Head, BRS, Kannara.
Curios made using banana fibre had been done at the station and training was also being given to entrepreneurs, she said.
The BRS has developed a new technology for micro-propagation of bananas, which facilitates production of 18-20 plantlets from a single sucker within four months. The technology does not require costly equipment, advanced skill or expensive labs as involved in tissue culture and hence the cost of production of micro-propagated plantlets is even less than that of normal suckers. In order to ensure optimum utilization of this technology, online training for common nursery workers has been planned.
The BRS is also planning the formation of a “Banana Scout” to aid the farmers in selection of suckers, nutrients and pest and disease management for banana cultivation under “Good Agricultural Practice”. They will work in the field under instructions of scientists at the station to help banana growers. The station has also undertaken different demonstrations with the objective of “Zero fallow land” at the station as well as in the selected panchayats.
Ms Pushpalatha said that the station was also launching a “Banana Seed Village” in the nearby panchayats for augmenting the production and marketing of quality suckers of different commercial varieties of Kerala such as nendran, njalipoovan, kunnan, poovan, grand naine, palayankodan, and chenkadali.
Government Chief Whip K. Rajan inaugurated the training for the newly developed micro-propagation technology and seed village project on Monday while the entrepreneurship development centre was opened by Vice Chancellor R. Chandra Babu.
India is the largest producer of bananas in the world with an area of 8,80,000 hectares, producing 30 million tonnes of banana and plantain.
Even with this commanding position in production, there is a deficit of 20% in the per capita availability of fruits in the country. The huge post-harvest losses of 30-35% is estimated to cause an economic drain of ₹2,40,000 crore every year.
