The dissipation characteristics of powdered manure were carried out by analyzing different impeller designs in an experimental blower unit. The impellers were designed by following the ASME code and the effect of impeller design and speed on the discharge of pulverized manure were investigated. An experimental setup consisted of a 3-phase induction motor, a VFD, and a blower with impeller rotation in a clockwise direction. Four different types of impellers were tested by varying machine parameters and manure types. The study concluded that the radial impeller showed a better performance compared to other impellers

Agriculture continues to be the bedrock of the Indian economy, given 2/3rd of India’s population and 70% of its workforce residing in rural areas, generating nearly 46% of the national income, with its contribution to the GDP consistently at over 15% in recent years. As COVID-19 brought India’s economic growth to a grinding halt, agriculture emerged as the only sector that bucked the trend and aggregated growth. According to the ministry of statistics, the agriculture sector’s contribution to GDP has risen from 17.6% in 2018-19, to over 20% in 2020-21.

Extrusion processing is one of the several approaches that has been used to alter the physicochemical and microstructural properties of biopolymers. A novel hybrid extrusion process, called supercritical fluid extrusion (SCFX) that combines the conventional extrusion process with a supercritical fluid such as supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) as a low temperature-blowing agent offers new opportunities to design novel products. As a low temperature extrusion system SCFX permits the use of heat sensitive materials like proteins, micronutrients, nutraceuticals, etc. in the formulation. SCFX system also acts as a continuous reactor to direct the reaction in feed material to obtain extrudates with desirable physicochemical, textural, and functional properties. This article provides a brief review of the SCFX process, and its novel application in food industry.

Soybean Processing and Utilization (SPU)/Centre of Excellent on Soybean Processing and Utilization at the ICAR-CIAE, Bhopal has conducted 193 batches of soy based food Entrepreneurship Development Programmes (EDP) in which 3000 potential entrepreneurs from 28 states of India participated. Around 300 soybean processing enterprises have been established till date across the country for making different soy products such as soy milk, paneer (tofu), flours, snacks, curds, biscuits, kabab, chap, halwa, etc. The maximum units are located in Punjab followed by Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. These entrepreneurs have provided employment to 1500 workers across the country with an estimated total monetary benefit of Rs. 90 crores per annum. It can be inferred that the soy food based training and entrepreneurship development programme organized by the ICAR-CIAE, Bhopal since 1995 has resulted in the establishment of 300 successful enterprises that are significantly contributing to the Nation’s economy as well as in combating protein-calorie malnutrition (PCM) that exists in India.

Indeed, India is an agrarian economy. With the appropriate climatic conditions and the rich fertile land, the country has huge potential to become one of the leading producers of various agriculture products. With the adoption of advance agricultural equipment and tech-driven methods, we have huge potential to improve productivity. If we look at the Agriculture machinery industry in India, we undoubtedly hold the top position in annual production and sales of tractors, which is almost half of the global volume. The domestic sales of tractors had touched 900,000 units and exports were at 100,000 units. So we have a strong market for tractors, which basically are the prime movers for most land preparation implements. The issue here is that although we have mechanized most of the land preparation activity, but there is a lot more to be done on agriculture mechanization. There are abundant opportunities for mechanizing other farm activities to boost productivity namely – transplanting, precision planting, crop protection and harvesting.

Application of engineering in agriculture is known as agricultural engineering, and thus agricultural engineering aims at performing the agricultural work more easily and effectively with the engineering and technological inputs. Development, fabrication and operation of agricultural machines and equipment, efficient utilization of energy in different field operations, soil conservation, irrigation and drainage and efficient conservation and utilization of water, reclamation of degraded lands, processing of agricultural produce, preservation of food, renewable energy are some of the major subjects covered under agricultural engineering. With the increase in population leading to proportionate decrease in the land availability for farming, with less labour availability for farming operations, the scope and usefulness of agricultural engineering is increasing day by day.

The essential oil found in betel leaves has a wide range of medicinal application. So, extraction of highly bioactive compounds along with essential oil from betel leaves is interesting among the industries. However, extraction of this betel leaves oil by traditional methods negatively affects the yield, energy, time, and cost. So, the novel non thermal green technology has been adopted for better utilization and improvement of extraction yield. The cold plasma is one of the novel techniques consider as a green technology which eliminates the limits of conventional extraction methods and improved the extraction efficiency by surface etching of oil holding gland. It facilitate simple and fastens the extraction rate while preserving the biological compounds due to low temperature conditions. So, the cold plasma conditions have been optimized and found that 35 kV voltage with 10 min of exposure time produced 154.39 % of extraction yield efficiency.

Agricultural development in India is the outcome of coordinated interplay of man-machine-material interface. As the luxury of putting more area under cultivation has dried up, increasing per unit land and labour productivity in agriculture in the realm of over 73% of the small and marginal farmers having less than one acre land is one option. The land holding is continuously declining and about 85% farmers are small and marginal. The demand for mechanization to keep productivity in increasing order is consistently increasing and farmers, manufacturing industries with their network, government and NGOs are engaged in promoting appropriately mechanized agriculture. ICAR with its NARES system of specialized institutions has actively been engaged in need-based research and development of mechanized tools, equipment, machinery for production and post-harvest operations in food, feed, fodder, fibre, natural resins and gums. The foodgrain production with at least 20 % increase in production due to intervention of agricultural engineering technologies, touched the estimated record high of 316 million tons in 2022; and the Indian agriculture is changing phase from self-reliant to export oriented need based production and business system.

Rainwater is the most important potential source of soil moisture and surface water for agriculture farming system particularly in rainfed area. Shiwalik foothill region of Jammu and Kashmir UT locally known as Kandi is spread mainly Jammu, Samba and Kathua districts of Jammu region. The area mainly lies on low hills which join with foot hills of Himalaya’s and extended from Jammu to Uttarakhand. Agriculture of the area is totally depends upon mercy of rain. The soil loss has affected the agricultural production and hydrological regime to large extent. Flashy flow has denuded most of the top fertile soil. Due to undulating topography and gushing speed of runoff thus area remain short of water throughout the year except during rainy season. The major land and water management problems are being faced in this area includes excessive runoff, soil erosion, land degradation and erratic distribution of rainfall with space and time results in sizable loss of soil and nutrients are primarily responsible for low productivity and poor economic status of the farmers. Agrarian community suffers from water scarcity. Keeping this in view different soil and water conservation measures like poly tank, percolation tank, recharging pit, roof water harvesting system, earthen embankment, contour bunding, continuous contour trenching, bench terracing gabion structures and efficient irrigation system like gravity feed drip irrigation system and portable sprinkler kit were constructed/installed and demonstrated at the farmer’s field at three villages namely Gargal, Kandi and Godhan of Akhnoor Tehsil of Jammu district of J&K UT under DST funded project entitled “Demonstration of technologies for improving productivity of rainfed area in Jammu district. It was found that productivity of the area raised by 80-90% due to technological interventions under the project. It was also found that water table in the open well was increased by 1-1.5 m and water retention period in the well was increased by 30-45 days due to construction of recharging pit at the upstream side of the open well. Availability of water in poly tank and roof water harvesting structures encouraged farmer for growing vegetables crops thus enhanced their income.

According to Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, “a sustainable food system (SFS)” is a food system that delivers food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social, and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for future generations are not compromised. Food is the common link that connects ALL the 17 goals of the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals. Agriculture, being an extractive process, this should not surprising; but it took us long time for us to pay attention to the concept of sustainability.