Team Herald
PANJIM: Against the backdrop of concerns revolving around the low productivity of spices and its declining market, experts from the field are set to come under one roof in Goa, where they will try to work out strategies to revive the spice industry.
The Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute (ICAR) and Association for Coastal Agriculture Research (CCAR) have collaborated with the Directorate of Arecanut and Spices Development, Kozhikode-Kerala, to conduct a two-day national seminar on ‘Spices: Emerging Trends in Production, Processing and Marketing’ from January 21, 2020 at ICAR complex.
“Low productivity is one of the serious problems that the Indian spice industry is facing and this in turn causes low competitiveness in international markets,” ICAR said.
The major constraints with respect to low production and productivity includes traditional method of production, problematic use of pesticides, inefficient infrastructure facilities for post harvest handling, processing, storage and packing.
ICAR said that the industry is also facing challenges in the field of marketing, due to the poor product quality leading to hindrance in reasonable price realization and export avenues.
“To recapitulate the current research status and the new technologies developed in the country and in order to boost the Indian spice industry, ICAR has decided to organize a national seminar,” ICAR said.
The seminar will develop a platform for all the stakeholders from the Indian spice industry for reviving the current status and future research needs for drawing an action plan for developing technologies to enhance production, improving processing and marketing.
India is considered to be one of the largest producer, consumer and exporter of spices globally producing about 78 out of 109 varieties of spices listed by ISO.
The Indian spice market is projected to reach approximately USD 18 billion by 2020, which is at USD 2.71 billion at present.
