ANGRAU effects first patent tech transfer to industry

In an instance of industry-academia linkage, the Acharya NG Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU) has licensed two of its patented technologies "� ice cream freezer and fish vending and display table "� to the city-based small-scale unit, Yogi Industries.

The low-cost technologies are meant to benefit the rural folk who can acquire these equipments for a few thousand rupees.

The exclusive licence for manufacture and marketing of these equipment in the country is valid for two years. This is also the first-ever transfer of patented technologies to the industry by the varsity.

The new low-cost apparatus have been developed by the dean of home sciences department, Vijaya Khader, and a student of MSc (food science), Sudheer, under the national agriculture technology project (NATP).

Vijaya Khader initiated the project after her study of fisherwomen in the coastal ecosystem in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala . The study covered 28 villages comprising more than 6,000 fisher families.

Speaking to Business Standard, Vijaya Khader said the objective of the NATP project was to empower the fisher women technologically, reduce their drudgery in the context of fish processing, and create an awareness on hygiene and sanitation in fish handling.

She said the study had found that women were playing a major role in the post-harvest fisheries activities mainly in the marketing of fresh fish and processing in the four states covered.

The fish-vending systems would greatly benefit these women who were now burdened due to "ignorance, illiteracy, poverty, improper technology, additional constraints such as innate conservation, resistance to change and gender bias approach of technology transfer system".

The ice cream freezer, which is to be priced cheaply, would help cut on the wastage of milk and provide the poor with an additional revenue stream, she said.