Summary of Achievements of CoE on Sorghum under NFSM

(April 2015 – March 2016)

Objective 1:To strengthen Post-Harvest entrepreneurship development training programmes for stakeholders including women groups and SHG's and rural farmers belonging to all sorghum growing states in the country.

  • Four training programs for two days Entrepreneurship Development consisting of 50 trainees comprising of entrepreneurs and prospective farmers, NGOs, KVKs and government servants etc, have been organized
  • Demonstration of sorghum processing cum promotional and marketing measures to various stakeholders, women, students etc was conducted to whoever visited IIMR.

Objective 2: To facilitate Linkages between producers, entrepreneurs with consumer markets & Building tie-ups with major private players for large scale commercialization and distribution of sorghum foods across the country.

  • All the interested stakeholders including the trainees are being given guidance
  • Entered three MoU
  • Azure Edge Ventures – Nutri Bee for the technology licensing of sorghum puffs;
  • HarshaAgri bioPark
  • e Fresh for marketing of eatrite sorghum products.
  • Market Linkages are in progress to rope in big food players, Parle Products Pvt Ltd. with IIMR, Hyderabad.
  • Conducted One Day Consultative Meetingon “Enhanced Utilization of Sorghum – Exploring Domestic and International Markets” on 30th July 2015 at VAMNICOM, Pune.
  • Conducted and organized One Day Industry Interface Meeton 20thFeb. 2016 at IIMR, Hyderabad to showcase value added technologies developed by CoEs on Coarse Cereals under DAC.
  • The revenue generated through transfer of technology= Rs. 1.5 lakhs and Handling of commercial production and sales (1st April 2015 - 31st March, 2016) = Rs. 4.5 lakhs (Total revenue generated = Rs. 6.0 lakhs)

Objective 3:Creation of Awareness on Nutritional superiority of sorghum based value added products and Commercialization.

  • Eatrite products were showcased in 11 exhibitions, national seminars and Millet festivals at various places such as national seminar held on NAARM on 13-14th Dec. 2015, Organic Millet Fest 2015 at Nellore on 26th Dec. 2015, Millet Festival 2016 at Guntur, KrishiUnnatiMelaat Delhi IARI from 19 to 21st Mar. 2016 etc.
  • Promotion through Institutional visits- MANAGE, NAARM, IIOR, IIRR, NIRD, Hyderabad through mobile van; through newspaper Media coverage at least 10 instances and 2 Ad films were made.
  • Brought out a special technical bulletin on Nutritional and Health benefits of Millets
  • About 7.5 tonnes of eatrite products are produced and marketed especially through Big Bazaar outlets in Hyderabad and Mumbai

Objective 4:To develop novel value added traditional, non-traditional, RTE/ convenient food from processed and studies to enhance shelf life of the sorghum products.

  • Recipes of Sorghum Bhakarwadi, Sorghum BoondiLaddu, Sorghum Parboiled Wada, Sorghum Pancake and Sorghum based Sharbat were developed.
  • Enhancing shelf life of suji through pre-processing of Sorghum grain: Developed and standardized of pre-processed sorghum grain (soaked, roasted and pulverized) and cooking and shelf life study for semolina of idli, upma and khichidirawawas conducted which resulted an increased shelf life of all three sorghum semolina up to five months and resulted in improvement of end product textural properties.
  • RTE Extruded sorghum rich snacks:Product development trials were conducted for development of Extruded Snacks with sorghum rich formulation and standardized formulation of sorghum rawa- 50%, ragi flour – 22%, wheat flour – 5%, corn flour – 15%, rice flour – 5% salt – 1.5% and Baking powder – 1.5% with water 13% which gave good product and highly acceptable. The shelf life of the product was found to be six months.
  • RTE Extruded sorghum rich flakes:Product development trials were conducted for development of Extruded Snacks flakes of sorghum which were flattened in roller flaker and roasted, sorghum rich with formulation of sorghum idli rawa (84 %), corn flour (4.5%), rice flour (5%), wheat flour (5%), salt (1.5%) and water (15%) and was found to have best quality in terms of taste and texture. These could be used a breakfast cereals and had shelf life of six months.
  • Sorghum puffs:Development and standardisation sorghum puffs was done using puff gun machine by dehulling sorghum grain and conditioning to 20% moisture and adding 1% salt solution and firing at 0.7 MPa pressure resulting in a puffed sorghum product with output of 99% puffs. When packed in airtight MET pouches gave 2 months shelf life. Standardization process to increase the functional properties is under progress.
  • Sorghum-wheat composite pizza:was developed using various proportions and results showed that 50% wheat replacement with M-35-1 showed desirable qualities such as loaf volume, textural and sensory properties that are suitable for commercialization and marketing
  • Estimation of water activity, moisture of fat content of 40 sorghum cultivars was completed and remaining analysis is under process.

Other Achievements

  1. Applied for “Request for Examination-for two Patent Applications”.
  1. Process for preparing sorghum flakes from sorghum grains [Application No. 5711/CHE/2014 datedNovember 13, 2014].
  2. Device for preparing unleavened sorghum pancakes [Application No.6178/CHE/2014 datedDecember 8, 2014].