CFTRI tries its hand at newer areas

CGTRI has forayed into lipidomics, molecular nutrition to keep a lead in food science and technology

The Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), is foraying into newer areas, includeing establishing a nutraceutical park in Mysore, CFTRI Director Ram Rajasekharan, who took charge a year ago this day, announced at a press meet here today.

"The CFTRI is establishing a Rs 44 crore nutraceutical park at its Maregowdana Halli campus in Mysore as a joint venture of the Karnataka government, CSIR and CFTRI. CFTRI will provide land and infrastructure like pilot processing plants and analytical facilities to develop a product from concepts. The focus will be on nutraceutical products based on traditional foods. The park would be helpful to budding entrepreneurs for developing and marketing novel food products," he said.

While clearances from CSIR are awaited for the park, an MoU is in the finalisation stage with the state government. The CFTRI had also planned to take CSIR and CFTRI technologies through the adoption of villages and transferring technologies that will add value to their produce under CSIR-800 social outreach programme.

Haradanahalli in Chamarajanagar district had been identified for adoption as a 'Tech Ville' in Karnataka, for transferring technologies related to turmeric in the first instance, and of coconut and banana at later stages. This was in addition to several outreach programmes of interaction with farmers at villages for different produce, the director said.

More such tech villes in Karnataka and neighbouring states have been proposed to help farmers establish processing units using CFTRI's technologies. Explaining CFTRI's foray into two new areas in the last one year, Ram Rajasekharan said, it had forayed into lipidomics and molecular nutrition to keep a lead in the global arena of food science and technology.

LIPICS (Lipidomics Centre in India) was a new centre of studies set up by the institute to understand lipid or fat metabolism, and had started functioning from September 2012 at the institute's resource centre in Bangalore. It plans to look at various mechanisms operating at the gene level with regard to lipid production and digestion. It is also taking up studies on plants like Ocimum (Tulsi) and Portulaca (Doddagoni), whose seeds are said to contain oils rich in healthy Omega-3 fatty acids. These seeds are not used for any purpose at present and the research would add more value to the traditionally-popular plant.

LIPICS had already documented all possible versions of products of omega-3 fatty acid genes of the Mexican plant, Chia which are globally popular as a rich source of omega-3 and are used in traditional medicines, he said.

Molecular nutrition was another futuristic area which CFTRI had initiated. It would try to unravel the role of nutrition at the molecular level. Deciphering the roles that different nutritional elements play at the molecular level helps to understand why the nutritional elements behave differently in different persons and in different circumstances. This could pave the way for delivering nutrition more effectively through specially-designed foods.

The Department of Molecular Nutrition, another pioneering effort by the CFTRI, had been established at the Mysore campus to conduct biochemical as well as animal studies in the area. The department had begun functioning from July 2013 and would soon have its own facility and building, the director said.

In an effort to help SMEs, the CFTRI had decided to offer some of its 400 technologies free of cost. The CFTRI website was being updated to include the free offerings.

The CFTRI was also looking to developing high protein beverages from plants to provide sustainable processes that supplement agricultural income as well as form sources of additional nutrition, he added.