The Hindu Business Line : RRL-T `Swing Tech' wins favour back home

THE Swing Technology developed by the Regional Research Laboratory, Thiruvananthapuram (RRL-T) for producing food colours, spice flavours and extractions from fresh or dry spices and botanicals has found favour with the backyard market.

A technology transfer agreement with Plant Lipids, a Kochi-based oleoresin house, will enable the latter to make ginger oil and oleoresin from fresh ginger, Dr T. K. Chandrasekhar, Director, RRL-T, told Business Line. A number of entrepreneurs in the north-eastern States had acquired the technology much earlier.

Plant Lipids owns a comprehensive product portfolio - spice oils, oleoresins and natural food colours - all made from dried spices. With the adoption of the new technology, the company is expected to be able to market superior quality products made directly from fresh ginger.

Dr A.G. Mathew, Director, represented Plant Lipids during the function for effecting the transfer of technology.

Dr C. Arumughan, Head, and Mr M.M. Sree Kumar, scientist, at the Agro-Processing Division of RRL-T, demonstrated the salient features of the technology. The new plant for ginger processing will come up in three months at the Plant Lipids premises at Kolencherry, near Kochi.

Unlike the existing plants in the country, which produce oleoresin from dry spice, the new technology will enable production of oleoresin from even fresh spice, with superior organoleptic qualities and at a lower cost.

The National Research and Development Corporation, New Delhi, had selected RRL-T's `fresh flavour ginger oil' technology for the National Technology Day Award.

The technology was successfully implemented first in Litan, a remote place near Imphal, Manipur, and was subsequently transferred to two companies, one based in Hyderabad and other one in Byrnihat, Meghalaya.

No company from the home State of Kerala had so far approached RRL-T for acquiring the technology.

This, even while it had managed to breath fresh life into the predominantly agriculture-oriented economy of the north-eastern States where lack of a proper price discovery mechanism meant that ginger, the main crop, had to be sold off at ridiculously low prices. The absence of appropriate processing technology and marketing facilities had only compounded the problem.

Drying of ginger was not practical in these areas due to unfavourable weather conditions, which often forced the distress sales of fresh ginger.

But RRL-T's technology has paved the way for generating value-added products such as oils and oleoresins from fresh spice without necessarily having to undergo the drying process.

It also enables the entrepreneur to have the benefits of a variety of end products and the flexibility of operation.

The main advantages of the technology is its low cost of production, enhanced yields of up to 30 per cent and assured premium quality of products with fresh aroma.

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