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Our Correspondent
Kohima, March 31 (EMN): A one-day training on low cost preservation of horticulture crops under Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) 2019-2020 was held at district horticulture office, Kohima, on Wednesday.
In his keynote address, the district horticulture officer (DHO), Kohima, S Senka stated that preservation of fruits and vegetables were adopted for later use. He added that food preservation is necessitated as supply and demand do not tally.
Besides, he also stated that people resort to adopting preservation as certain food items are perishable and semi-perishable.
He maintained that food preservation also makes the seasonal food available throughout the year, adds variety to the diet, saves time and energy as the food has already been partially processed, stabilises prices of food owing to availability and decreased wastage of food by preventing decay or spoilage of food.
Various methods of preservation according to him are drying, refrigeration, freezing, salting, crystalisation, smoking, additives, preservatives, pickling and canning.
Resource person of the training was the deputy director of Horticulture, Meyasashi. He taught the participants on the technologies in preservation of horticulture products like fruits candies, mushroom drying, ginger candies, dry ginger, ginger pickle along with recipes, preparation- methodologies, and storage, among others.
He laid special focus on value addition of ginger as it being a well established cash crop in the state of Nagaland. However, he lamented that many a time ginger growers face marketing problems because of lesser local demand which compelled them to sell the surplus production through middlemen at low prices.
The officer also highlighted the various value added products that could be manufactured from ginger such as dehydrated ginger, ginger paste, ginger candy, ginger oil and oleoresins, salted ginger, ginger pickle, ginger power etc.
A hands-on demonstration on dry ginger, salted ginger and ginger pickle was also conducted. Further, he also taught on packaging technology and marketing along steps to follow with determining nutritional values from food laboratories and getting Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) license registration.
The trainees were distributed with low cost preservation kits and dryers.