Millet goodies on display at food fair

A large variety of millet-based value added products, from breakfast staples to desserts, are on display and sale at the Millet Food Expo at the Pappanamcode-based NIIST

The CSIR-National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST) is beckoning all the millet fans out there. c.

The food expo is a key segment of the March 13-18 ‘One Week One Lab’ (OWOL) programme organised by the NIIST, a constituent lab of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), to showcase its R&D achievements and innovations.

Open to the public from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., the expo features millet-based food products by MSMEs from different parts of Kerala and neighbouring States, including those of start-ups incubated by the cottage-level food processing incubation-cum-training centre of the National Institute of Food Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management (NIFTEM), Thanjavur. Products of local communities and start-ups from various districts in the State are also among the attractions.

The festival aims to promote the cultivation, value-addition and consumption of millets, now an important, highly nutritious component of the global food basket. The event also coincides with UN declaration of 2023 as the International Year of Millets, a statement said.

Products on display and sale include millet breakfast mix or flour (dosa, idli batter, upma, puttu and chappati), breakfast cereals, instant millet pulao, sprouted millet products, noodles, pasta and vermicelli, snacks and desserts like millet ice cream, cookies, laddoos, cakes, brownies, murukku, energy bars, and pizza.

Apart from value-added products, the expo also has on display post-harvest millet processing machinery.

CSIR Director General N. Kalaiselvi inaugurated the stalls of the Millet Expo on Monday. As part of the OWOL programme, NIIST is organising a series of seminars on topics such as energy, environment, strategic and regional materials, agriculture and food processing.