After the Basmati dispute, India is in for another shock on the patents front. The US and Japan have registered 60 patents on food and medicinal uses of tamarind, of which India is the worlds largest producer.
Indian organisations have only six patents on value-added items from tamarind between 1974 and 1990. Four of the eight patents are owned by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and one each by the Indian Jute Industries Research Association (IJIRA) and the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), according to the patents facilitating cell (PFC) of the ministry of science and technology.
PFC officials who scanned the US patents office database said 30 patents have been granted in the US between 1978 and 1997 for various applications of tamarind such as fungicide, plant growth promoter, reducing calorie content, improving shelf life of processed food and beverages, high viscosity water soluble substance for covering wounds, thickening agent in dyes and printing ink, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals for tropical applications.
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Japanese companies who seem to have discovered the wonders of tamarind fairly recently have as many as 30 patents since 1990 in areas of food processing, health care and plant care. Of these 28 patents relate to the use of tamarind seeds while only two concern its pulp.
India produces some 2,50,000 tonnes of tamarind per year against the world production of some 4.80,000 tonnes. At home tamarind is widely used in ayurvedic formulations, food additives and even crude industrial applications. However, very few organised attempts have been made to exploit value added products out of tamarind. Though the ICAR has several research projects on traditional Indian agricultural products, successes have been few. The most active component of tamarind is its seeds and most value-added produces are from tamarind seed kerrnal power (TKP). Due to its fine bonding properties, it has potential in the textile dyeing industry while the jute industry uses it as starch (one Indian patent).
Some of the US patents relate to use of TKP as a creaming agent for rubber latex (chewing gum) and as thickeners in some types of explosives.
Tamarind is rich in tartaric acid and invert sugar which opens it to possible applications in sugar substitutes. India exports about 25,000 tonnes of tamarind in raw and in simple value-added form like paste for food applications and TKP as raw material in other industrial applications.
Agricultural scientists warn that unless some high value-added industrial and pharmaceutical applications are discovered, India may end up becoming merely an exporter of simple processed tamarind.
Given its extensive use in ayurveda, the maximum potential for high value-added products was in pharmaceuticals, the sources said. It anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, laxative and anti-depressant uses were well known.
But for reasons for lack of sufficient research, its full potential was not exploited in modern medicine. The peculiar agroclimatic conditions of the sub continent make tamarind grow in the wild much like neem.
In the hill slopes of the Deccan Plateau, the best variety of tamarind is grown.