Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Dr KH Singh, director of The Indian Institute of Soyabean Research (IISR) has said that that rising cultivation area of soyabean is improving the socio-economic standards of farmers. Now the emphasis is on adding value to the soyabean food products.
Dr Singh was addressing the valedictory sessions of the 3-day training programme held at The Indian Institute of Soyabean Research from March 13 to 15. The subject of the training program was ‘Processing of Soybean for Food Uses and allied products’.
25 members of 5 farmer-producer organisations (FPOs) of Jalna district of Maharashtra were trained under the Smart Agriculture Project sponsored by the Government of Maharashtra.
Addressing the valedictory program, Dr Singh said that the agri-business incubation centre of ICAR-IISR is doing exemplary work in imparting the training and technical know-how of soybean processing and utilisation for various soybean-based food products which can be used for achieving the nutritional security of those who need it, especially in rural India. Soybean, besides contributing the socio-economic betterment of millions of small and marginal farmers of central India has now crossed the boundaries and has become very popular in Maharashtra and Southern States. This is also one of the areas of increasing the domestic consumption of soybean for stabilisation of market prices.
Dr Vineet Kumar, Dr BU Dupare, Dr Neha Pandey, Dr Manoj Shrivastava and Dr Mrinal Kuchlan hold the interactive technical sessions. The subject of the session were soybean seed production, Improved Soybean Production including resource conservation technologies, cold pressed soybean oil and other related themes.
During its inaugural session, Tejas Shinde of Smart Project informed that he has established FPOs in Maharashtra which are coming up in a big way in soybean production and allied sectors. On this occasion, Dr Mahaveer Prasad Sharma, In-charge of the ICAR-IISR Incubation centre briefed about number of similar requests being received from other districts of Maharashtra.
