Tiruchi agri-tech innovators add taste, value to banana

Chocolates, pickles, and cookies made with the perennial fruit find their way to store shelves

With rise in focus in recent times on the export of traditional varieties of bananas, growers of the perennial fruit in the Cauvery delta have also begun to examine the economic potential of its value-added iterations such as candy, dehydrated banana, pickles, and juice.

However, though several agri-tech companies in the region have started large-scale production of value-added banana products, their growth has been slow due to many reasons. “The abundance of banana also works against it when we try to create value-added products, because most of the processes are still manual. Producing banana flower pickle, for example, is costlier than lime or mango, because it has to be cleaned and prepared for marination by hand. To reach the mass market and keep costs low, one needs the traditional wholesale-retail distribution network, which is currently unfeasible for many value-added banana products within local markets,” A. Sivakumar, proprietor of KP Enterprise, told The Hindu.

Mr. Sivakumar’s products retail under ‘Shri Poorna’ brand, and include banana chocolate, banana stem pickle and solar-dried banana, among others. “We market our products through mobile outlets in and around Tiruchi. We have also started online sales, which has been useful, especially during lockdown,” he said.

The increased interest in banana’s nutritional profile during the pandemic has led to development of products such as banana flour which can be used as a base ingredient in other fruit-based recipes.

The Thottiam Banana Producer Group (TBPG), formed by 13 farmers in 2014, has developed 10 products that are sold in India and abroad under ‘Madhur Fruits’ brand.

“Our most popular item is ‘Yummy Banana’, where we mix solar-dried ripened bananas with pure mountain honey as a bite-sized snack. The other is banana flour, which can be a part of fortified health mix,” said Manikutty Subramanian, managing partner, TBPG.

Besides its existing range of banana-based cookies, toffees and pickles, the company will be bringing out banana juice and vinegar next year, as demand for its products grows in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, and in Europe.