WINGED 'ARMY' AND THE SMOKING 'GENERALS'-WHO IS THE WINNER?

Collateral damage is a wonderful word discovered to justify damages to the civilian populations trapped between two fighting forces in a battlefield situation. Recent sufferings of civilian population in the war of attrition between Sri Lankan Army and LTTE fighters are fresh in the memory of the world. All wars are undesirable and from Lord Buddha to Mahatma Gandhi realized the foolishness of war and violence for attaining any goal. Probably Kurukshetra War in Hindu mythology deserves the credit for recognizing the futility of wars, as felt by Pandavas after their pyrrhic victory over Kauravas. One may wonder what this has got to do with the consumer of to day who has plenty of other issues to be worried about. No matter how much one abhors war, the ground reality is that life is a series of mini wars between the consumer on one side and a host of day to day problems on the other side.

One such war is of some importance in the lives of people, especially in India where mosquito based diseases are on the increase lately. Dreaded diseases like Filaria in the south-west coastal areas, Malaria in certain areas near the forests and many others like Dengue, Chikungunya, Encephalitis, Lymes disease, Yellow fever, Bubonic plague, West Nile Virus and many viral fevers are spread by these winged creatures and their control is paramount in protecting the vulnerable population from them. During fifties and sixties of the last millennium, governments in the states used to have regular programs of spraying and fogging pesicidal preparations in the vicinity of affected areas to control breeding of mosquitoes in stagnant waters which seem to have become a part of history. The hapless citizens are left to fend for themselves to escape from the dangers posed by these winged army. Their shrill 'music' ( from their 'wing' instrument!) delivered directly to the ears once the lights are switched off and the sharp stings to suck out blood from the victim are common place occurrence in millions of homes across the country. One can ignore these signals only at one's own peril!

There are over 3500 species of mosquitoes( meaning small fly in Portuguese or Spanish) is estimated to be 170 million years old and most of them are benign to human beings, only a small percentage spreading diseases. They have a pair of scaled wings which are moved 1000 times a second generating the "music" sound, so annoying during sleeping time. Their most lethal weapon is the proboscis, the antenna like structure containing two tubes, one to inject its saliva and the other to suck out the blood from capillaries of the victims. The saliva contains a mixture of chemicals including some unique anticlotting, antiplatelet and vascodilatory agents to increase the fluidity of the blood for easy suction. Potential for extraction of anticlotting drugs beneficial to man from mosquito saliva is being explored. Measuring no more than 1/4-3/4 an inch, a mosquito can suck blood 1-1.5 times its weight which is less than 0.01 ml! It is a little known fact that mosquitoes love foods like nectar for regular consumption but will have to get blood for conceiving and laying their eggs. While loss of blood is not very insignificant, the transfer of infection through its proboscis from one person during its previous visit to another during the next visit is of a serious concern with epidemic potential. While in captivity mosquitoes can live for a month, under open environment its life is limited to 1-2 weeks.

Here comes the valiant 'private' generals offering socour and solace to the victims of the unwelcome nocturnal visitors with their mats, coils and vaporant bottles which come in many variants. In western countries mosquito killing gadgets can be as costly as $ 5000 a piece incorporating modern technology of attracting the mosquitoes and killing them. The simplest electrical device costing about Rs 100-150 in India is the electrical zapper, looking like a tennis racquet which needs to be swished around for the catch, which electrocutes the flying creature on contact. Imagine every consumer emulating the feats of the all time great champion tennis player Roger Federer in using the zapper every night to score aces against these winged opponents! The sonic gadget using high frequency sound waves which looks simple is not often effective. Fogging machines containing pyrethrins, permethrins or/and piperonyl butoxide preparations are recommended for use during dawn and dusk in the gardens, the preferred visiting time of these "uninvited guests" to control their population around buildings.

DEET (N, N Diethyl-m-toluamide), essential oils of lemon, eucalyptus ( (p-menthane-3,8-diol or PMD), Icardin or Picardin, Napelactone, citronella oil, neem oil, Bog Myrtle etc are known mosquito repellents in use. Plants like citronella, marigold, ageratum and catnip possess repelling properties because of their content of some active constituents. Generally people with high cholesterol, uric acid, CO2 emission, lactic acid levels attract mosquitoes more than others while women are more preferred choice for these predators. They are believed to be most active during full moon periods and are more attracted towards incandescent lights. Mosquito species Toxorhynichitis are effective natural predators for the house mosquitoes, each of their larva able to gobble about 5000 larvae of smaller mosquitoes during their development cycle. Dragon Fly can eat mosquitoes but their population itself is being threatened due to many environment problems.

In India approved fumigant materials work either through smoke generated when they are burned or vapors generated when indirect heat is applied on to the absorbed mats or by evaporation of the liquid fumigant. These contraptions are supposed to work for 8-10 hours spewing out the vapors against the hardly visible enemy and give a sound sleep to the beneficiary. Such gadgets help to continuously emit the anti-mosquito substances in a closed environment as the effect of repellents lasts only for about 30 minutes to 2 hours on a single application. Electronic gadgets are being marketed that can control the time of fumigation with auto shut off in 8 hours after switching on before going to sleep. Normally a 35 ml bottle is rated to work for 30 days but high pressure promotion and fierce competition in the market are driving manufacturers to claim up to 90 days life for the same volume of fumigant. How this can be accomplished is any body's guess! What effect these fumigants have on the health of the unsuspecting sleepers also is an unknown factor. "Sleep well and regret later" may be the ultimate slogan if this industry, which is currently the winner raking up huge profits (courtesy the dreaded winged army), is allowed to grow indiscriminately without any strong scientific foundation, so critical for ensuring consumer safety in the long run.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

MODERN HOUSE, TRADITIONAL KITCHEN-THE INDIAN PARADOX!

Cooking of food is an important activity in all house holds as the major objective in life is to lead a comfortable life of high quality. Though the trend of eating away from home is steadily growing due to the pressures of modern life when time is at a premium, home cooking is still cherished by many for the feeling of well being and fully meeting the joy of eating clean, safe and delicious food preparations. Home cooked foods not only ensure palatability and safety, psychologists consider food as a medium to transfer love and affection from the mother to the members of the family. Besides eating to gether as a family enhances bonding, kinship and mutual understanding greatly and consequently improves the societal behavior of people in general. It is another matter that many house holds employ chefs and cooks who bear brunt of the cooking and food is served by the servants, not by the mother!

Though no precise data can be found regarding the ratio of kitchen area to the carpet area of an average household, stray reports do indicate a trend of progressive reduction of space for kitchen activities that ought to raise alarm considering the importance attached to home cooking by nutritionists, psychologists and sociologists. The advent of studio apartment concept has changed the kitchen into kitchenette because of the extremely small area allocated for cooking activity. The rising construction cost and reduced cooking practices contributed to decreasing kitchen sizes in modern housing schemes. Added to this, rapid growth of food processing industry offering RTE food products like retort pouched foods and other formats, extensive use of microwave ovens, refrigerators and freezers, availability of a wide range of kitchen appliances make large kitchen area irrelevant to day leading to ever shrinking kitchens, especially in metropolitan areas where real estate costs are sky high.

A major selling point for the post-war kitchen systems is the convenience factor and no effort is spared to maximize this aspect in modern kitchen designs. Issues that confront the new home builders are many and each one needs to be carefully and realistically assessed before deciding on the size and configuration of the facility. Primary use of kitchen, desired space for working, desired shape and color combinations, extent of time spent in kitchen, frequency of visits to kitchen, frequency of cooking, frequency of entertaining guests at home and their numbers, type of meals cooked, type of flooring, lighting, appliances to be installed, workspace, storage, traffic flow, liking for island kitchen, ventilation and exhaust system all contribute in shaping a kitchen in a modern house. The needs are different for working couples, busy families, serious amateur cooking freaks, professional cooks, senior citizens, families entertaining frequent guests and people with phenomenal 'eating out' habits. The budget also makes a big difference as specialized facilities come for a 'price' that should be affordable.

In India the onus of designing kitchens and appliances does not seem to be earmarked and many western concepts are 'copied' blindly by the builders without looking into their relevance to local foods and their cooking methods. Even the cooking platforms do not have standard designs suiting the physical build of the Indian house wives and even the height of the platform can cause frequent discomfort. Added to this many Indians believe firmly in 'Vastu sastra' which recommends how a kitchen must be designed with reference to the location of stove and other facilities in order to lead a peaceful life. Being a tropical country pests like ants, roaches and lizards pose some problems and blind copying of western kitchen designs can only lead to excellent shelters for these vectors. The spicy foods, use of oils for cooking and frying, generation of kitchen waste and its disposal and improper placement of windows and exhausts can make maintenance a messy job. Low consumption of processed foods necessitates spending more hours in the kitchen and unless the movement in the kitchen is optimized, house wives can end up with posture problems associated with knee joints and ankles. All these call for an integrated approach to kitchen design involving disciplines like food technology, civil, electrical and mechanical engineering areas, health science, orthopedics, physiotherapy and sociology. An institution like CFTRI should take the lead in launching such a national project to evolve kitchen designs and building technologies that suit the physique of ppulation in different states and earn the eternal gratitude of the hapless Indian wives.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

GLOBAL 'OVER HEATING'-THE AMAZON 'CLUE'

The delayed monsoon in India this year has been causing grave concerns all around with its unimaginable consequences on the agricultural front and the food security of the country. The weather experts are predicting a shortfall of 10-15% of rains compared to last year and this has been attributed to the 'El nino' effect in the Indian ocean resulting from global warming which, in turn is caused by uncontrolled emission of greenhouse gases like CO2. While scientists have been warning for many years about the consequences of such emissions on the weather, the consciousness has not percolated down to the politicians, bureaucrats and common man who are more concerned with to day's problems than the ones that can imperil life on this planet in future.

Mindless deforestation, under the pretext of infrastructure development and increased acreage for agricultural cultivation reduces the green cover so necessary to 'sink in' CO2 generated by the modern living styles. The fast rate of forest denudation in south Asia for increasing Palm cultivation and in Brazil for sugarcane production for biofuels are expected to have far reaching repercussion on weather changes in the coming years. Increased absorption of CO2 by the vast ocean tends to increase acidity of sea water putting in peril the diverse aquatic life and disturb the ecological equilibrium there. While expansion of agriculture is an unavoidable option for feeding the growing population, replanting on a massive scale is urgently called for. There are millions of acres of land lying fallow and millions of kilometers of roads with both the sides amenable for planting trees and all it requires is a pragmatic program to energise people to go for it.

Marine Algae, once considered as a potential CO2 sink, can help to some extent but cannot be a solution due to many practical constraints. Recent experiments to fertilize oceans using ferrous sulfate for facilitating algal blooms which could absorb CO2 do not justify investments in this strategy as algal bloom after CO2 assimilation do not sink to the ocean bottom but releases the gas back into the atmosphere nullifying the objectives of such exercises.

Scientists are excited about a clue they got recently from the Amazon basin in Brazil where natives have been using a black colored compost like material for fertilizing their exhausted agricultural lands for many years without anybody bothering to see what it is. Vast areas there contain this material up to 6 feet deep and the mystery of its real nature has since been established. Given the name 'Biochar', it turns out that the dense and loamy material is nothing but charcoal formed centuries ago by burning of biomass under oxygen starved conditions. It is a form of carbon, the burnt remains of plant and animal materials and could stay in tact in the earth for long without deterioration or destruction. Biochar refers to small pellets of charcoal when plant wastes such as wood chips are heated in a process without oxygen, called pyrolysis. When added to soil these pellets help to boost fertility of soil by retaining moisture better, besides efficiently storing CO2 and other green house gases indefinitely. Charcoal can adsorb over 60000 chemical substances including many gases, which are bound in the matrix of its honey comb structure with a surface area of about 3000 square feet per gm, by Van der waals force. This has made it one of the most effective tools during the last 15 years in fighting poisoning, pollution and for many other applications.

The 'Geosequestration', involving burying of polluting gases under ground or beneath the ocean floor is becoming a possible choice for overcoming green house gas problems. But considerations of cost and logistics make this approach unrealistic in the near future. Whether Biochar could be an answer to the global warming phenomenon remains to be seen as very little is known about the formation of this material in the Amazon basin. How plant and animal biomass can get converted into Biochar, especially on earth's surface needs to be studied. Two pre-requisites are absence of O2 and high temperature, both absent in the environment where Biochar was discovered. Manufacture of Biochar artificially may be inconceivable and impractical in to day's context. Probably Biochar discovery may translate into more efficient fertilizers for agriculture and green house control may be incidental.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

WORLD DOES NOT LIKE A WINNER!

Competition is a part and parcel of life and it is an irrefutable fact that in any competition there can be only one real winner. Good sprotsmanship calls for cheering the winner, the underlying philosophy being 'participation is more important than winning'. How many takers are there for this logic? Probably very few!. Losers have always the excuse for not winning and in many competitions winning by 'hook or crook' is the main motto. But playing the winning-losing game with economic issues is not justified as is being done by powerful vested interests in the industrialized countries in hitting the palm oil industry in the south Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

Palm oil is, no doubt, a food material with predominant levels of saturated triglycerides and western countries frowned upon its use for human consumption on health considerations. It was in eighties of the last millennium that a sustained campaign was started to brand palm oil as an unhealthy oil, with great potential for causing hypercholesterolemia, CVD and obesity. It took enormous efforts by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council to debunk these claims through systematic health studies involving some of the very best nutritionists in the world and it turned out palm oil can be a healthy oil, equal to other edible oils, if not better. Oil Palm growing countries also invested in technological improvements to offer more healthy products like red palm oil, palmolein and palm kernel oil. To day oils derived from Oil Palm are the most economical ones, finding extensive use in thousands of processed foods. With an annual production of 43 million tons, accounting for almost 40% of total world edible oil production, palm oil really has reached commanding heights on its own strength. Even in USA with its powerful soybean oil lobby, 1 in 10 food products on the retail market there contains palm oil and their annual consumption is more than 1 million tons.

Now comes the second wave of attack on palm oil with a few western based multi national companies alleging that palm oil is not a "green oil" because they are produced by large scale deforestation of forests which is cause for high emission of CO2, the villain that heats up our globe! They have even formed a union involving MNCs like Uniliver, L'real, Colgate, Tesco etc fancifully called Round Table On Sustainable Palm Oil with the avowed purpose of stopping deforestation of jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia and encouraging production of sustainable oil so that they can completely switch over to its use by 2015. What is amusing about this charade is that they are least concerned about auto emission by millions of petrol guzzling vehicles in their own countries which happen to be the major cause of green house effect in this planet! They are also forgetting that forests are mass destroyed in Brazil for the cultivation of sugarcane, not for human consumption but for running their automobiles. If palm oil cultivation is done in deforested areas, the organized planting of palm trees on the same land provides some green cover in no time, providing a CO2 sink there.

It is a tragedy that rich countries do not appreciate the tremendous efforts put in by the counties in South East Asia in raising the productivity of palm oil in their lands making it the most economical commercially produced edible oil, affordable to millions of low income families across the word. Palm oil yield per hectare is more than double that of coconut oil and 10 times that of canola and soybean oil. All kudos to the major producer nations who made this possible. In stead of encouraging such endeavors, the level field for logical commercial competition in the global market landscape, is being vitiated for extraneous considerations. It is a challenge the developing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia must meet squarely with the help of other fair minded nations and thwart the attempts to malign their image in the world in the name of 'sustainable agriculture'.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

"ENGINEERED" FOODS-A PANACEA FOR 'UNHEALTHY' LIFE?

Engineering discipline strives to give practical operational frame work for a scientific finding and success of process and equipment designs will depend critically on the soundness of the basic findings on which they are based. Food engineering has come a long way since emerging as a distinct discipline during the second world war from the main stream mechanical engineering discipline and is dependent on chemical engineering to be successful in creating commercial production systems. The enormous variety of processed products in the market are possible to day because of tremendous advances made by food engineering discipline in the last 3 decades. With the advent of robotic technology, mechanization and automation are bound to become industry watch words as the need for human intervention and increased scale of operations tend to bring down production costs significantly. At a time when processed foods are being blamed for many ills of the society, does such a development augur well, is an important question.

As early as 1956, CFTRI pioneered synthetic rice from tapioca roots through a revolutionary technology which was much ahead of time. To day practically every processed food is made by application of food engineering in a big way whether it is for flavoring, coloring, texturizing, viscosity modification, shaping, concentration, drying, fortification, enrichment, cooking, sterilization or packing. Beyond this, new foods are 'engineered' to provide novelties for attracting new consumers and boost health attributes. Cold extrusion has given to the consumer pasta products from wheat, rice and other ingredients while cooker extruders have been able to give hundreds of new products with ready to eat characteristics. Breakfast cereals, one of the earliest convenient foods created by the industry became a regular part of diet in the western food system and continuous innovations and diversification to meet the needs of young and old alike are being made. In India engineering application to traditional foods area has contributed to a number of innovations, mainly for increased productivity and product standardization. Commercial plants for mass manufacture of staples like roti, idli, dosa, vada, many RTE foods are now available from the food machinery manufacturers.

A technology is like a double edged sword and its utility value depends on the way it is applied. If unsound ingredients are used in the recipe, the product also is bound to be unsound in terms of quality,safety and nutrition. If right ingredients and balanced recipes are used engineered foods can revolutionize the health status of the consumers very significantly. There are innumerable examples of healthier foods evolved by conscientious industry to meet the lofty goal of keeping the population healthy all the times. Meat analogs, omega-3 fruit juices, mocroencapsulated probiotics, protein enriched foods, interesterified fats, cheese based snacks, healthier ice cream products, digestive biscuits, whole wheat breads, fiber enriched products, low calorie foods, low glycemic breakfast cereals and snacks, low salt and low fat meals and snacks and many others strengthened with many phytochemicals like isoflavones, antioxidants, stannols, carotenoids, etc, are all excellent products based on the innovations of food technologists and food engineers.

In spite of such fantastic range of engineered foods available to the consumer during the last few years, why is that the health status of population is declining rapidly with many diseases assuming epidemic proportion? Probably food technology is not 'the be all and end all' for every food related health problems which must be recognized. The products coming out of the industry are not meant to change the life style of people but are only to supplement or augment the consumption of natural foods, especially fruits and vegetables, as much as possible. It is the consumer who should make a choice regarding what he should eat, how much he must eat and to what extent the processed foods should replace naturally cooked foods at home in his daily menu. Depending entirely on food industry for sound health and blaming it for all the ills, can never be justified.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

NATURAL MALTING VS ENZYME MEDIATED MALTS

The technology of malting involves soaking of the grains, sprouting under high humidity conditions, drying and processing to remove the vegetative parts. Grain legumes and cereals are generally sprouted for preparing malted products. While green malt preparations are rich in enzymes used in the production of brewed alcoholic beverages, the kilned version is more commonly made for the food industry as a flavor ingredient in various foods like beverages, breakfast cereals, bakery goods etc. Barley is the most commonly used cereal since it has characteristic flavor and produces high levels of various enzymes on germination, ideal for getting good quality products. Some of the important enzymes produced during sprouting include alpha-amylase, beta-amylase, alpha-glucosidase, limit dextrinase, endopeptidase and endo-beta glucanase.

The malt desired for many applications is generally kilned at lower temperatures of about 60-65C while that demanded by distillers goes through a higher temperature of 85C. The pale malt has higher enzyme activity while dark malts contains only about 30% of the original enzyme activity. When malt is used for yeast fermentation, the sugars generated provide energy while the hydrolyzed protein products, as a result of the protease reaction, support yeast growth to produce alcohol. Beta glucanase enzyme modifies the insoluble polysaccharides into smaller molecular weight soluble components that helps to increase the viscosity very significantly. Beer products are valued for their color, flavor, bitterness derived from hops, viscosity and frothiness. Hard liquors like brandy and whiskey are made by distilling the alcohol produced during yeast fermentation and volatile constituents that come along with the alcohol give them their characteristic flavors

Manufacture of malt extract, an important flavor material for food industry is made from malted cereals. The combined malt amylolytic enzymes convert the insoluble starch present in the cereal into dextran and maltose while proteolytic enzymes hydrolyze proteins into peptides and amino acids. Aqueous extract so obtained is evaporated to get a viscous mass with about 78-80% solids. Spray drying yields malt extract powder or dry malt extract which will not contain any enzyme activity. In contrast dry malt obtained after sprouting, removal of sproutings, drying and coarse grinding under low temperature conditions, possess the characteristic enzyme activity so necessary for the liquor industry. Dextrin malt, caramel malt and black malt are made by heating to different extent and they have 53-63% reducing sugar, mainly maltose and 4.5 to 5.6% protein substances. Diastatic malt products like malt syrups have 60-72% reducing sugars and 1.8 to 3.5% proteins besides varying enzyme activities. Malt extract and syrups find use in more than 100 different food products including ice cream, baked goods like bread, biscuits and crackers, icings and fillings, malted milk and pastry.

As the malting operations involving several steps extending over at least 3-4 days for a batch to be completed, industry is severely handicapped in raising the productivity to meet the rising demand. The challenge is to make the process continuous and though technically it should be possible, the investment requirement will be astronomical while infrastructure requirement is mind-boggling. One of the alternate options available is to evolve a process that will use industrial enzymes commercially available to imitate the natural changes characteristic of natural malting. All enzymes identified as involved in malting like alpha and beta amylases, peptidases, beta glucanase and others are commercially produced by several internationally reputed biotech companies. Already some manufacturers of liquors have been able to reduce the barley needs for breweries by 70% using commercial enzymes and save considerably on time and cost. Biochemical engineers have studied the reaction kinetics of these enzymes and optimal working conditions are already well known. Continuous bio-reactors of different capacities with precise control of reaction conditions, are available to day and malt preparations of various specifications can be made continuously using them.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

FOOD PROTECTION FROM PREDATORS-TECHNOLOGY LIMITATIONS

Perception about spoilage of food grains due to infestation differs widely amongst the scientific community and figures as high as 50% are some times quoted as the extent of loss to the predators due to inefficient management of agriculture and storage of grains. The estimates of grain production reported by various countries and compiled by FAO refer to what is harvested and it is any body's guess as to how much of this reaches the consumer's table. World food grains production was 2.136 billion tons in 2007 and only 60% was available for consumption as food while 36% was used for seed purpose and 3% for bio-fuel production. Considering that the population is growing at about 2% annually, food production will have to keep pace to avoid scarcity and famine. By using scientific technologies, wastage due to infestation has been cut down significantly but the problem of pesticide residues posing high health hazards may see progressive elimination of many of them for use in food protection systems. The most recent warnings came from a respected international group of endocrinologists that some of the pesticide residues act as endocrine disruptors which have effect on the reproduction systems of both females and males besides causing such dreaded diseases as breast cancer, prostate cancer, neuroendocrinology, thyroid metabolism and obesity.

There are systemic insecticides, contact insecticides, inorganic pesticides, natural insecticides, organic insecticides and biological pesticides, many of them permitted in many countries. Organochlorine compounds like aldrin, chlordane, endosulfan etc are highly poisonous and their continued use is increasingly being frowned upon. Organophosphates like chlorpyriform, dimethoate, malathion etc are very effective against many insects but their indiscriminate use is contaminating water sources posing potential threat to human beings. Carbamates like carbaryl, carbofuran etc are comparatively less toxic but still face opposition from environmentalists because of pollution problems when used on a large scale. Pyrethroids like cypermethrin are relatively less harmful and are commonly used in crop protection. Neonicotinoids based on nicotine, plant derived protectants like asimina from papaya seeds, azadirachdin from neem, cinnamyl acetate, pyrethrum are all available options though they are not as effective as synthetic insecticides. Biological insecticides based on the bacteria B. thuringiensis, fungi Metarhizium anisopliae, nematode Steinemema felliae, virus Cydia pomenella granulovirus are receiving attention as possible alternative protectants to chemicals.

For storage of food grains beyond 3-4 weeks, three synthetic chemicals are widely used which are Phosphine, Methyl Bromide (MB) and Sulfuryl Chloride (SC). While Phosphine may take a few days to a week to get satisfactory results, MB accomplishes satisfactory disinfestation in a day or two. Being an ozone depleting material, MB use is being discouraged in many countries and as per the Montreal Protocol it is going to be phased out. SC is the new star being promoted as a clean fumigant as its life time was thought to be just 5 years. It can also kill most of the grain infesting insects and their larvae within a day or two. But recent reassessment of its life time indicates it could be 8 times more than what was previously thought and it has 4800 times more potential as a heat trappping gas compared to CO2 casting a shadow on its wide scale use. CO2 at concentrations above 40% and Nitrogen containing less than 1% oxygen are also possible future choices provided their application logistics become practical and economical. Use of exhaust gases from internal or external combustion which contain about 12% CO2 is another option being looked into. Rice weevil, grain borers, flour beetle, grain moths, meal worms etc pose big challenges in terms of their control and elimination and if food grain stocks are to be maintained at prime condition for distribution and long term food security, use of insecticides is inevitable with their attendant consequences.

Pyrethrum from chrysanthamum flowers, Limonin from citrus peel, Spinosad, a secondary metabolite from Saccharopolyspoia spinosa, Deltamethrin, a synthetic pyrethroid and piperyl butoxide are some of the so called 'green label' pesticides, being considered especially for organic food preservation. Salt water Diatomaceous Earth (DE) is another promising natural silica based grain protectant with considerable promise. Neem oil based pesticidal preparations have become prominent now though dosage considerations are not favorable for their large scale application. Indiscriminate application of highly toxic synthetic pesticides at the farm level and fumigants at the storage level is a serious concern facing humanity and a global consensus needs to be evolved to tackle this life threatening practices without compromising on the objective of increasing food availability to the growing population.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/