Energy demand to drive up oilseed, sugarcane growth

BANGALORE: Energy will be a key driver for the growth of the oilseeds and sugar sectors in the country, the director general of Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), Mangala Rai, said on Thursday. “States like Karnataka have immense potential in crops like sorghum, which can be used for developing ethanol for blending with petrol,” he said. His comments come at a time when faced with a rising crude oil import bill, the Centre is pushing for an ethanol (made from sugarcane) doping.

Making out a strong case for promoting Pongamia Pinnata (which is gaining ground as a key biofuel crop), Mr Rai said plantation of Pongamia could be encouraged across the 107m hectares of fallow land in the country.

Referring to edible oils, he said there was a need to promote rice bran oil. “Our annual rice output can easily yield around a million tonnes of rice bran oil — which is considered to be healthy,” he added. It would be pertinent here to mention that edible oil imports ranks among the top five items in our trade basket, costing the nation over $4bn annually.

Mr Rai said Indians had the habit of throwing or discarding the oilmeal derived after extracting oil from oilseeds. “Soyameal is one prime example. It has 50% protein content compared to the 20-25% that one derives in pigeonpea, but we export close to seven million tonnes of soyameal every year. We should look at promoting more valueadded use of soyameal,” he added.

On edible oil imports, Mr Rai said, while Indian imports topped the five milllion tonne mark, there had been some key achievement like the annual per capita output of oil palm (of three tonnes) in India was on par with the major producers like Malaysia and Indonesia.