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With lack of post-harvest infrastructure causing to up to 40 per cent losses in perishables, Punjab is now roping in corporates to create and operate modern fruit and vegetable markets known as pack houses in the state. These facilities are a pre-requisite for diversification.
To start with, the first such market will be operational in Ludhiana from October on 54 acres of land, for which a MoU has been signed with Voltas Ltd of the Tatas. The model will be replicated in 10 more districts of the state for which expressions of interest (EOI) will be invited soon.
The present practice of storing all fruits and vegetables together in single cold chamber enhances the shelf life of one produce at the expense of the other, resulting in huge post-harvest losses.
The modern markets will have product-specific cold storages of different temperature ranges, besides ripening chambers, so that fruits such as mangoes, bananas and papayas are not ripened through banned products such as calcium carbide, but with ethylene gas in ripening chambers followed by storage of fruits at right temperatures, says Dr BS Ghuman of PAU’s Post-Harvest Technology Centre, which has
done the feasibility study for the market.
Even though corporates such as Reliance, Bharti, Subhiksha, Birla group and ITC are marketing fruits and vegetables in the state, their scale of operations has been limited due to lack of adequate post-harvest facilities, as creating such an infrastructure is highly expensive. So the Punjab Agricultural Produce Marketing Board will play the role of a facilitator by pumping in funds being received under Central assistance schemes, while the corporates with technical expertise in the area will be invited to create and operate such facilities, board secretary Deepinder Singh said.
“Right from pre-cooling of highly perishable items at the farms, their transportation in cooler vans to their grading, sorting, standardisation, reconditioning, ripening and storage will all be done at our pack house which will be completely high-tech with touch-screen kiosks, electronic weighing machines and electronic display boards. They will also be neatly packed depending on the needs of the business customers and other buyers,” says Abhishek Sharma of Voltas.
And it is not just the farmers who stand to gain when post-harvest losses are minimised. As has been seen in the developed countries, the benefits are also passed on to the customers in the form of quality produce at lower cost. For Punjab, which is trying to come out of the wheat-paddy cycle due to alarming fall in its groundwater table by diversifying into high-value crops and intends to emerge as a hub of horticulture exports, creating post-harvest facilities is now a necessity, PAU experts say.
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