London, Oct 6 (PTI) An expert team is now in place at Centres of Excellence in Telangana and Haryana as part of an India-UK partnership towards accelerating the deployment of energy-efficient refrigeration for food and vaccine supply chains across India.
The programme involves the Telangana Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-Chain and the Haryana Centre of Excellence for Crop Postharvest Management and Sustainable Cold-Chain.
It is a joint initiative between the Centre for Sustainable Cooling (CSC), University of Birmingham, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and state government and industry partners from India.
In the in-country senior management team, India Lead Avinash Verma is joined by Telangana and Global Logistics Lead Jacob Kurian and Haryana and Post-Harvest Management Lead Anant Shukla. They are supported by vaccine cold-chain expert researcher Aneeka Kamal Canchi and technology expert researcher Anil Kumar.
Further staff are planned to be recruited as the programmes become fully operationalised.
“I’m delighted that our senior expert team is now in place and look forward to working closely with them as the centres are developed into a state-of-the-art research, training and innovation hub to deploy needs-driven and equitable system-level cooling and cold-chain solutions in Telangana and Haryana, across India as well as the global food and vaccine chains,” said Professor Toby Peters from the University of Birmingham.
“Our new team has been hand-picked to deliver a systems approach focusing on non-technological and behavioural issues as well, recognising that technologies need to be financeable, integrated into processes and be accepted by end users, while some solutions can be achieved through changes or adaptations to operational practices," he said.
The team's brief is to deliver an integrated project plan and coordinate the India Centres of Excellence by driving engagement with strategic partners from government, industry, academia, and civil society.
The centres are underpinned by memoranda of understanding (MoUs) signed between the governments of Telangana and Haryana and the University of Birmingham. The university serves as the strategic and academic, training and research lead with a consortium of other top universities, including Heriot-Watt University, London South Bank University, Wageningen University and Research, Cranfield University and VU, Amsterdam.
The UNEP provides strategic coordination, project management and partnership engagement.
The centres will also work closely with the teams at the Africa Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Cooling and Cold-chain.
The Centres of Excellence will have a solutions development lab and demonstration centre, a model pack-house and community cooling hubs to support capacity building.
It is expected to have a significant impact on the lives of farmers across India. Currently, many farmers are unable to sell their perishable produce because they do not have access to cold storage facilities and many vaccines are lost due to inadequate storage, among other factors.
The centres will come up with solutions and business models that will help farmers preserve perishable produce and improve the quality of goods.
Adopting a "hub and spoke" model, the centres are designed to deliver upskilling and training programmes for farmers and local agri-businesses, agri-start-ups and entrepreneurs, equipment technicians and researchers.