Ludhiana agri-institute offers incubation facilities for farmers and entreprenuers

NEW DELHI: Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET) at Ludhiana has offered farmers and budding entrepreneurs to use its state of art facilities at the institute before establishment of their agro processing industry under newly launched World Bank funded business planning and development (BPD) unit.

Director CIPHET Dr S.N. Jha revealed that agro processing industry in Punjab has lot of potential to generate employment and income opportunity in rural areas.

“BPD unit at CIPHET would be offering agro processing units including rice mill, dal mill, chilli processing centre, mobile agro processing unit for hands-on experience and testing of products by the farmers in the incubation period,” he said, adding that aim of the institute is to empower farmers by providing them alternative source of income.

Senior scientist and principal investigator of BPD Dr D.M. Kadam said that farmers would be having choice to choose from food product based technologies including guava bars, extruded products, groundnut and soybean milk products, green chilli, onion and garlic, turmeric powder, ginger flakes and powder, makhana kheer mix and beetroot powder for setting up their agro processing industry.

Speaking on the agro-processing industry, he added that CIPHET would also develop entrepreneurs to produce proven agro-processing machines including banana comb cutter, composite mini dal mill for pigeon pea, makhana popping machine, pomegranate aril extractor, maize de-germer for dry de-germing of maize and dryer, litchi peeling machine, custard apple pulper etc.

He urged the farmers to contact the BPD unit of the institute for getting hands-on-training at CIPHET and test their products in incubation facilities.