Rhizone Crop Processing

Problem

Rhizome based spices are processed in a tedious, cumbersome, and time-consuming manner. The threat of uncertain climatic conditions makes this process even more cumbersome for farmers.

Solutions

Traditionally rhizome based spices like turmeric and ginger require 15-20 days of sun-drying prior to being sent to market. We have optimized a process where in the same is reduced to one batch of 12 hours and as an added bonus, an improvement of bioactive elements is observed. We have improved the curcumin content in the same crop from 2% in traditional processing to 4.8% in our proprietary process.

Brief description

Turmeric is predominantly harvested from February to May. This season sees unconventional rainfall and farmers currently only rely on sun drying. The open dried turmeric, once in contact with moisture, gets contaminated and hence results in the laborious process of layering and collecting multiple times. This processing, along with threats of unconditional rain, adds to the burden of cost, time, all after the tedious 9 months spent preserving the crop. We identified the problems that persist with the cumbersome traditional processing and attempted to resolve them with the use of adequate technology. We have piloted the turmeric processing methodology, with complete in-house operations, that reduces the time of processing rhyzhomes to powder by eliminating sun-drying through the use of a reactor vessel and cabinet dryers to arrive at the dehydrated rhizome suitable for quality powder products.

Innovator: S 4 Foods

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