“Don’t like to eat vegetables and sprouts? Drink them!! A small-scale production unit is proposed to set up at the site of a NGO, Institute of Rural Pediatrics, Baramati, a collaborator of this project. Once this model is successful, it will be duplicated in many other places in Maharashtra. Initially with one product namely vegetable drinks to be sold via vending machines in Mumbai / Pune. Additional food products will be manufactured depending on the local types of vegetables and fruits grown nearby. At ICT, the FET department has products as well as technology available for dehydration of fruits and vegetables. Some specialized and Indian traditional products will be developed during this project. Some work on vegetable waste utilization is already done in the PI’s group, which will be continued. Dehydration of fruits and vegetables, making soup mixes and selling ready to drink soup is not a new or high-tech project per say. However so far there is limited commercial success due to several reasons. Indian economics, consumer’s psychology and complete utilization of raw material affect the overall commercial viability. This ambitious project aims at a holistic approach to tackle the problems simultaneously in a techno-economically effective manner so that at the end of the day, everyone is a winner!

India tops among largest producers of fruits and vegetables in the world, as a processor we are perhaps in the bottom three countries. This has resulted in a huge national loss by way of 30 to 50 % post harvest losses of the fresh produce. Farming will be lucrative like industry if farmer gets reasonable price for the fresh produce. Although the consumer pays high or moderate price for the fresh commodities, the grower usually gets an unfair low price due to unfavorable distribution chain network and some examples like during high season Tomatoes and Onions do not even fetch even Rs. 1 per Kg!!  This will change only if vegetables and fruits are processed near the site of production and converted into value added products.

The present project has in built business plan that will demonstrate how to generate wealth from simple vegetables by value addition at site of production.