The government will announce the “Tomato Grand Challenge” to solicit suggestions for addressing price fluctuations
The Consumer Affairs Ministry will launch a grand challenge on 20 June and invite creative suggestions for enhancing the production, processing, and storage of the commodity in an effort to combat an unexpected rise or decline in tomato prices.
This week, the Tomato Grand Challenge will begin. As we did in the case of the onion, we will seek for creative ideas, develop prototypes, and then scale them,” Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told PTI.
The Grand Challenge seeks to create “technologies for pre-production; primary processing, post-harvest, storage and valorisation of tomato” at the farm, rural, and urban sectors, he added.
The goal is to provide a thorough strategic solution that will both reduce the loss and increase value.
“We’ve made progress in the past year with onions. 13 of the over 600 concepts we got for Onion are now being supervised by professionals, according to Kumar.
If there is proper storage and processing, a rapid rise or decrease in price for tomatoes may be managed. There should be a stabilising mechanism, similar to the buffer. According to Singh, this requires innovation in seed quality, primary storage, post-harvest management, and crop information.
Four verticals will be inviting suggestions. The first step is creating and spreading superior tomato varieties, production techniques or methods that are appropriate for the rainy season, dry and humid heat, processing, and mechanised fruit harvesting.
The creation and dissemination of information systems for crop planning, market intelligence for farmers, platforms for interfaces between farmers, nurseries, merchants, and customers, production methods, etc., come in second.
To limit post-harvest losses during harvesting, processing, and transportation, the third category is creative post-harvest treatments and packaging options.
The fourth is creative storage methods and technology for extended preservation and other measures to lessen panic buying because of perishability.
