Agritech company AgNext Technologies has collaborated with NAFED to organise a virtual training and awareness programme on quality assessment of pulses for Maharashtra’s biggest Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).
AgNext has engaged with five FPOs in the state to create awareness about quality standards of pulses, particularly tur, for the upcoming procurement season. The FPOs will in turn train 40,000-50,000 farmers from across the state.
The programme aimed to train FPOs about the different market quality standards for tur. The commodity is graded and priced based on this assessment. Practical demonstrations of physical assessment parameters were done to apprise the participants on how to recognise broken, damaged, immature, shrivelled or weevilled pulses, presence of foreign matter, moisture content in the samples, and other essential parameters. The participants were also shown how AgNext’s physical quality assessment device ‘SpecX Visio’ can instantly analyse tur dal samples and conduct a physical quality check in less than a minute.
Taranjeet Singh Bhamra, CEO and Founder, AgNext Technologies, said in a statement, “Traditional methods of food quality assessment are subjective and prone to manual error. Ultimately, this impacts price realisation of the commodity at the time of the trade. Better awareness and understanding of the quality parameters of a commodity can help farmers trade better and generate more income”.
He said tech-enabled best practices at the farm-gate and mandi level will help farmers improve their output quality and productivity over time.
Sanjay Nichal, Divisional Manager at the Vidarbha Cooperative Marketing Federation (VCMF), one of Maharashtra’s leading FPOs, said, “Uncertainty in food quality is one of the biggest reasons for rejection or low pricing of any commodity. It is important to generate awareness about quality parameters and new-age technologies being used for quality assessment by procurement organisations.”