Mr. Mayur Nilawar will present his APS as per the detail below:

Date: 21st February 2023

Time: 1130 - 1230 hrs.

Venue: CTARA Conference Room No.1

Title: Development of Solar Powered on-Farm Micro Cold Storage

Guide: Prof. Amit Arora

Co-guide: Prof M V Rane

RPC Members: Prof. Satish B. Agnihotri and Prof. Shirish B. Kedare  

ABSTRACT:

Global food supply chains are facing various societal challenges. As a direct result of these challenges, most of the supply chains are operating below the ideal state, resulting in 15 to 20% of the food produced for human consumption is getting wasted. India loses approximately INR 926 billion because of poor post-harvest management. There are few limitations which promote food loss in the supply chains; lack of cold chain system, inadequate packaging and heavy dependence on manual labour. Some of these losses can be minimised by implementing cold storage, reefer transport, pre-cooling and locally viable technologies. The cold chain consists of the transportation of perishables along a supply chain through thermal and refrigerated packaging methods. Cold storage plays an essential role in reducing post-harvest losses of perishables by enhancing their shelf-life. India has 6,300 cold storage facilities but is fragmented across the country and still face a challenge with investments and technological support.

The research aims to evolve possibilities for value generation, which could be imagined in the form of the better income of farmers through interventions such as the development of on-farm standalone micro cold storage system to minimise post-harvest losses of horticulture produce. Such systems are to be built as affordable solutions to individual farmers as well as the farmers’ community. On-farm storage solutions scale down the concept of large scale refrigeration to protect perishables against spoilage before they reach the market.

The solar-powered micro cold storage has a storage capacity of 3 MT and equipped with thermal back-up, which eliminates the conventional battery back-up system. Thermal back-up provides cooling during the absence of the primary energy source. On-farm cold storage helps the farmer to store the produce on-farm and can sell it when market prices are high. This will help them to earn extra profit and also help to minimise the losses. This can largely be seen as an integral part of tapping the value chain of agri-produce via technological routes.