SHILLONG, Feb 5: A first-of-its-kind fly-off event in West Jaintia Hills on Saturday demonstrated the use of novel and innovative drone/UAV technology for payload delivery — a move that could solve the first-mile connectivity issues for Lakadong Turmeric farmers.
It may be mentioned that Lakadong Turmeric has been identified under The One District, One Product initiative under the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, as a product with excellent potential for growth and export for West Jaintia Hills.
ODOP partnered with AGNIi Mission, one of the nine technology missions under the Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Advisory Council to identify Indian innovative technologies that can play a transformative role in the end-to-end processing of Lakadong Turmeric, starting with leveraging payload drones (UAVs) to transport the turmeric in large quantities, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in a statement.
Addressing the gathering, Additional Secretary, DPIIT, Sumita Dawra, said that this fly-off event was a first step towards showcasing the innovative solutions that can propel first-mile connectivity while ushering in Industrial Revolution 4.0.
The fly-off event would not only to give a fillip to the ODOP initiative but also leverage modern technology as a fundamental solution to overcome the bottleneck of transportation that acts as a barrier in realising the optimal potential of this spice from Meghalaya, she said.
It may be noted that the Lakadong Turmeric from West Jaintia Hills, one of the world’s finest turmeric varieties with the highest curcumin content of 7-9 per cent (in comparison to 3 per cent or less in other varieties), is fast-becoming a game-changer for the economy of the district.
Meghalaya has also applied for a Geographical Indication (GI) tag for Lakadong Turmeric.
The percentage of curcumin and oleoresin content in turmeric determines the demand by the industry along with the price. India is the largest producer and exporter of turmeric (APEDA, 2019).
Dawra informed that major importers of turmeric were the extraction and processing industries that require high curcumin and oleo resin.
In consonance with its mandate in April last year, the ODOP Team successfully facilitated the trade of 13,136 kgs of sliced and dried Lakadong Turmeric to a large food-processing industry in Ernakulam, Kerala, in 2021. It may also be noted that under the ODOP initiative, the price of Lakadong Turmeric has increased by Rs. 20, from Rs. 150 per kg in the year 2021 to Rs. 170 per kg in 2022.
Dawra said that under ‘Lakadong Turmeric 2.0’, new efforts were being planned to scale up procurements for sustainable sales for the harvest season of 2022 and the years to come.
For the same, the ODOP team led buyer visits to Meghalaya in December 2021 wherein direct interactions at the farm level and buyer-seller meets were organised for representatives of interested buyers.
