Description of the Course

Globally, the food industry faces a huge challenge for feeding a growing population while minimizing its environmental footprint, and reducing the food waste. The latter is a substantial global problem, as approximately one-third of all food produced being lost or wasted. Technology offers a range of solutions to address this issue across the entire food supply chain, from farm to fork. There are innovative tools, trends and techniques in the contemporary Food Technology using multidisciplinary outlook to contain and/or minimize the waste and steer in a new era of greener food production and consumption.

It’s imperative to prepare the future workforce in this important and evolving landscape, given the huge climate change crisis in front of all the nations alike. This training program is designed to build capacities in food professionals specially the college teachers, researchers and students to learn, integrate and align the outlook for a better tomorrow. It shall make them more informed and better equipped professionally. The teachers in food tech colleges are invited to participate in the course as they can inspire students to embrace innovation and contribute to a more sustainable food system. The food related research scholars and students shall be able to comprehend these crucial aspects as they prepare themselves for the professional journeys. The training program is planned on below described themes.

• Understanding sustainable food systems: To comprehend interconnectedness of food production, consumption, and environmental impact, the participants shall learn how the food choices can contribute to a more sustainable future. This shall also require developing much sought-after job skills such as data analysis, critical thinking, and problem solving.
• Newer means of preventing food waste at farm level: To know about precision agriculture combined with enhanced storage technologies such as modified or controlled atmospheric storage, and smart packaging for checking food wastes from farm, and coupling it with weather predicting information to plan harvests at farmers’ ends.
• Enhancing greener supply chain in food industry: To learn beyond conventional techniques. Use of AI for predicting demand, Block chain technology for food traceability, online platforms for ordering surplus food are bringing in a huge wave of change.
• Consumer awareness, education and behavior change for greener choices: To inform and update about apps for inventory management, smart fridges for extending storage, and reducing spoilage, for sharing surplus foods, and reducing food wastes.
• Sustainable food packaging and labelling solutions: To apply edible, biodegradable and compostable packaging materials for reducing polymer/plastic waste in food products (unprocessed/semi-processed/processed) and lessen the environmental burden. Dynamic labelling concepts for showing the actual shelf life are being introduced to check rejects, thus bringing in huge savings to all- producers, retailers and consumers.
• Upcycling and repurposing the food waste: To learn about food waste composting for urban agriculture, anaerobic digestion for producing renewable energy (biogas), with concept of reducing environmental burden.

Special Feature: An additional session on career opportunities in the segment of ‘Food Technology and Sustainability’