Millet Fest key feature of CSIR-NIIST’s ‘One Week One Lab’ programme
Series of high-profile seminars on live topics to mark OWOL
Trivandrum / March 10, 2023
Thiruvananthapuram, Mar. 10: The Millet Festival, highlighting the huge scope of millets in ensuring global food security and India’s potential to emerge as a millet cultivation and value-addition hub, will be the key feature of the six-day ‘One Week One Lab (OWOL)’ programme of CSIR-NIISTthat gets underway here from March 13.
The first such initiative, OWOL seeks to showcase the achievements of major research projects of each of the 37 laboratories of CSIR and their application for social and economic development touching diverse domains.
As part of OWOL, CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (CSIR-NIIST), a constituent laboratory of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India, has also planned a series of high-profile seminars featuring top scientists, technocrats and administrators at its campus at Pappanamcode in the city.
Dr N Kalaiselvi, Director General, CSIR and Secretary, DSIR will inaugurate the OWOL programme at the CSIR-NIIST campus on March 13 at 12.30 pm.
The Millet Festival is aimed at promoting cultivation, value-addition and consumption of millets across the country, coinciding with the decision of the United Nations to observe 2023 as the International Year of Millets (IYM), as proposed by India.
Dr C Anandharamakrishnan, Director, CSIR-NIIST, Thiruvananthapuram, will preside over the inaugural function in which Prof Javed Iqbar, Chairman, CSIR NIIST Research Council, will be the Guest of Honour.
A conclave, planned as part of the Millet Festival,will focus on strategies to showcase millets grown in different parts of the country and their value-added products on global platforms. Ensuring greater public participation, recipe and cooking competitions have been organised as part of the event.
Scientists, scholars, planners and subject experts participating in the conclave will identify areas of focussed activities to promote the cultivation of millets, value-addition and popularise consumption of millet-based products for a healthy life.
“The UN is observing IYM-2023 to create domestic and global demand for millets to provide nutritional food to the people by enhancing the cultivation base and value-addition. Millets are known as ‘super food’ or ‘nutri-cereals’ given the presence of considerable content of proteins with balanced amino acids, minerals, fibre, fatty acids, carbohydrate and antioxidant phytochemicals in them,” said Dr C Anandharamakrishnan.
Besides the expanding national demand, millet-based products also have a huge global market waiting to be tapped. Being one of world’s largest agricultural countries, India is eminently positioned to emerge as a global leader in millets production and value-addition, said Dr. Anandharamakrishnan.
Other experts who will be sharing their insights into the phenomenal effects of millets include Mr K Subramanian, DGM, NABARD, Thiruvananthapuram and Mrs Latha Sharma, Assistant Director of Agriculture, Attappady;
The festival will also have millet food stalls, farmers meet, MSME meet, millet familiarisation sessions, chef challenge, cultural programmes and a B2B counter.
The meet will deliberate on key themes such as products innovation, scope of start-up ventures, adoption of technology and smart and sustainable farming practices and export promotion of millet-based products.
The festival will also have millet food stalls, farmers meet, MSME meet, millet familiarisation sessions, chef challenge, cultural programmes and a B2B counter.
Millets such as Peral millet (kambam/bajra), foxtail millet (thina), porso millet ( panivaraku), finger millet (panjapullu/raggi), Kodo millet (varagu), barnyard millet (kuthiravaali) and little millet (chaama) should be the main ingredient of the entries for recipe and cooking contests. The best dishes will be awarded with Rs 10,000 (first prize) and Rs 5000 (second).
Top scientists, technocrats and administrators from major institutions across the country will attend a series of seminars at the event in a bid to explore ways of effectively leveraging the fruits of scientific and technological research yielded by the national institution for the wellbeing of the society. The high-profile deliberations will cover a wide spectrum of live topics relating to agricultural, environmental and defence sector as part of OWOL programme launched by the Government of India.
