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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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20221
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Subject: Processing and Food Engineering × Author: Kavya, Pendram × End date: 2022 × Start date: 2022 × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Study of Osmo-Dehydration of Mahua Flowers (Madhuca Indica)
    (DRPCAU, PUSA, 2022) Kavya, Pendram; Shrivastava, Mukesh
    Mahua flowers are underutilized forest produce which has a very high potential for nutritional and economic benefit for the people. There is a wide scope of its utilization in effective way using engineering interventions. Hence, the present research was executed to study an important processing aspect of Mahua flowers i.e. osmotic dehydration. The process of osmosis was carried out by employing BBD experimental design with four independent variables having three levels each which included sugar concentration (SG) – 45, 55 and 65%; solution temperature (ST) – 40, 45, 50°C; immersion time (IT) - 60, 120 and 180 min and solution to product ratio (SPR) - 3:1, 4:1 and 5:1. The impact of these independent variables on three dependent variables - weight reduction (WR%), solute gain (SG%) and water loss (WL%) of osmo-dehydrated commodities was studied with 29 experimental design variations. The results were analysed using ANOVA and a second order polynomial model was fitted to the data. The optimization was done using RSM, which gave an optimal solution as sugar concentration (SC)-59.31%, solution temperature (ST)- 49.39°C, immersion time (IT)-153.85 min and solution to product ratio (SPR)-3.32 :1 in order to obtain optimized yield of water loss (WL)-18.32%, solute gain (SG)-2.99%, and weight reduction (WR)- 15.97% with desirability value 1.0. Furthermore, three distinct drying air temperatures (50, 60 and 70°C) were employed in a laboratory model tray dryer to conduct drying investigations on raw fresh, blanched and osmosed Mahua flowers. On the basis of recorded data of weight loss with elapsed drying time, drying rate and moisture content reduction were evaluated. Drying of Osmosed Mahua flowers samples at 70°C drying air temperature resulted in shorter drying time as compared to raw fresh and blanched samples. The minimum time for drying was achieved by osmosed Mahua flowers at 70°C and it attained a final moisture content of 8.30%. The overall variation in bulk density was 0.414 – 0.467(g/cm3), in true density was 1.060 -1.435(g/cm3) and porosity was 0.582 -0.689 for different Mahua samples after drying. Osmo-dehydrated mahua flowers at 60°C showed the greatest hardness/peak force of 12.60 N with 0.580 second fracture time. the osmosed Mahua flowers dehydrated at 60°C resulted as the best acceptable product with overall acceptability of 6.93 with best rehydration characteristics. Good quality raisin like product could be obtained from drying of Mahua flowers by using osmotic dehydration technique followed by hot air tray drying at 60oC.