Difference between revisions of "Team:IIT Kharagpur/Practices"

Great survey!would be very useful ,if installed in food stores like McDonald's and kfcetc.good luck!

It is a good concept

Your intiative is good.it is very useful to all obviously.

It is a great initiative. Let's hope it solves the problem of food spoilage.

Good luck iGEM team for your upcoming short innovation

Bio­strip to detect food spoilage! seems to be a great and innovative idea.

Its very good idea. We should fund this. Keeping in mind it should be affordable to everyone.

Well 1st of all great work u guys are doing. proud of u guys as an alum of Biotech, IIT Kgp. "

SUGGESTIONS:

I wouldn't buy a detector, as I never had problems with spoiled food not being identifiable as spoiled.

as a food technologist I haven't heard about this. If food processors can put expiry date then what different can GMO do? why will consumers pay extra? Consumer acceptance can be a big problem in India.

Be specific in detecting fungal/bacterial spoilage. Because most of our food of acidic nature is damaged by fungal partners and food with high water activity by bacterial members. So, target a specific group that covers wide food products.

First of all would you pack the spoilage detector in the food packages before being purchased by consumers? Or would you have a spoilage detector for individual consumer's detection for example after opening of the food package? Would it be safe to use? How about disposal?

Regarding the iGEM Groningen design in 2012: How would you make an applicable, useful and simple detector for food e.g. in the fridge? If you put your detector into the fridge at time 0, how fast would you know if the food is spoiled or not, regarding the design of your detector. E.g. bacteria based detector needs bacteria to grow and produce certain compound resulting in the detectable colour. Would the lower temperature have an effect on the time of compound production and therefore the spoilage detection? For the best results at the competition, rethink and discuss your application strategy with as many people as possible. Take the critique of the design and try to make it better. Be prepared to answer all of those questions and to defend your application design at the Jamboree (judges are very straightforward with the questions). Good luck with the project! Regards from Tjaša, Wageningen 2014 BananaGuard.

Well 1st of all great work u guys are doing. proud of u guys as an alum of Biotech, IIT Kgp. "If there was an easy, quick and trustworthy biological food spoilage detector how much will you spend to buy it?" i am confused­ Are u talking about the machine r the replaceble strips. Please mention. All the best and jeetkeana....

I wouldn't pay a cent to buy something that will let me know if something is spoiled or not. In my experience (I cook), I have till date been able to detect if a food is gone bad or not pretty effectively. A strip or any other innovation on this arena, I think will not do any good as it is in fact, redundant. Nature has already done this for us. All you're doing is appealing to the eyes, which I believe would not really serve the purpose.

On the 3rd of September, three of our team members interviewed an eminent faculty member of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. Hari Niwas Mishra of the Department of Agriculture and Food Engineering, who is an expert in the field of Health Foods & Nutraceuticals, Innovative Food Processing Technologies and Food Safety & Quality Control. This is how it went:

us: Sir you have been working in this field for about 21 years...can you tell us about the statistics of food spoilage in the country...like how much wood gets wasted every year due to spoilage?

prof mishra: You see, a few days ago i was reading in the news reports that ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) conducted a recent study in association with CIPHET (Central Institute of Post­Harvest Engineering and Technology), which involved a survey to assess spoilage incurred in food storage, handling,etc. According to the report, 4­8% of food grains, and 15­18% of perishables get destroyed every year due to food spoilage.

us: Can you tell us about the various techniques that are currently available for detection of food spoilage?

prof mishra: there are old traditional techniques which include various types of plating methods, and techniques to obtain microbial counts which have been in use since decades. Among the new methods, electronic sensor­based techniques are more prevalent. Nowadays, biological kits, for detecting specific pathogenic microbes like salmonella are also available. HiMedia is one such company making biochemical test kits.

us: The acceptability of GMOs by the public is often seen as an issue when a genetically engineered product is released in the market. What are your views regarding the acceptability of our product, if commercialised?

prof mishra: There has always been a big divide in the Indian society when it comes to acceptance of any genetically engineered product. Equal groups of people are willing to accept and equal groups are against it. Most are concerned regarding the safety of the product, whether it has any side effects or not, since that has never been established in a solid manner in the past. If somehow we can establish that our product is absolutely SAFE for consumer use, then we can surely think of a long­term capture of the market.

us: How do you propose we can solve these issues regarding acceptability of our product, if released?

prof mishra: We first need to analyse what the consumers want from our product. As in most of the food products, it is the economic and nutritional benefits that they look for...and simultaneously the product must be safe to use continuously. These days, due to high level of adulteration in food products, consumers are always in an apprehending mode and try to avoid new products. But the change has to come at some point. For that, they have to be convinced aptly.

us: Do you think that our product can be easily incorporated into the food quality control industry, given the available practices in that field? what industries can we target?

prof mishra: yeah, concept­wise, it appears OK. But still those people need to know the exact details of how it works, the pros and cons, disposal issues (if any), which are the substrates on which it works best and several other factors. The stability and user­friendliness of the product are of utmost importance while deciding its integration into the market. You can target the local companies manufacturing analytical instruments at first...they are the ones which can try and introduce your product at a small level and then increase your influence gradually. Eg. Alpha moss, novozymes, Fox, etc.