At Seed Tech Asia 2014 conference organized by ICRISAT’s Agribusiness and Innovation Platform (AIP) stakeholders focused on how technological interventions and proper management at the post-harvest stage can help reduce losses and thus improve yields for the smallholder farmers.

As part of the conference, an Indo-Israel session on ‘Post-Harvest and Food Security’ was organized. This was followed by a panel discussion on ‘Technologies on Post-Harvest Handling of Crop Produce – Way towards self-sufficiency’. The sessions focused on how to improve the post-harvest scenario for the Indian smallholder farmer drawing on experiences from Israel.

Dr Saikat Datta Mazumdar, COO, NPK-AIP, ICRISAT, presented a case study discussion on ‘Food Technology and Food Processing’. Mr Aravazhi Selvaraj, COO, INP-AIP, ICRISAT, presented on ‘Post-harvest Scenario and Need for its Management’.

During the conference, ICRISAT team interacted with Mr Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, Agriculture Minister of the newly formed state of Telangana, India. The minister discussed with ICRISAT the agricultural and horticultural development plans for Telangana.

The Seed Tech Asia 2014 conference held on 8-9 July 2014, was hosted as part of AGRITEX 2014, an agricultural trade fair, bringing together the farming community, agri-specialists and agri-service providers under one roof. This is the biggest platform for promoting start-ups and agripreneurs in India.