Executive Summary : | Maize (Zea mays L.) is the important cereal crop after rice and wheat in India. It accounts for more than 10 per cent of the total grain production. Maize is a nutritious cereal, rich in starch, fibre, protein, fat, essential amino acids and micronutrients. Maize is grown as a staple food, but it is also being used as quality feed for animals, basic raw material for industries. Although normal maize is high in protein (11%), it is low in essential amino acids like tryptophan and lysine. However, with the availability of bio-fortified nutrition-rich maize hybrids, this issue has been addressed. Numerous bio-fortified hybrids with high tryptophan, lysine, pro-Vitamin A, high zinc content have been released in various countries. Maize goes through a number of food processing unit operations for making flour, flakes, popcorn and other processed foods. In India, full potential of bio-fortified maize (Vivek QPM 9, Pusa HM4 Improved, Pusa HM8 Improved and Pusa HM9 Improved etc.) is not being utilized thoroughly compared to other nutrition-rich crops. More than 15 Million farmers are engaged in maize cultivation, and from this, employment for 650 million person-days is generated by related business ecosystem of India. Available machinery for value addition of maize is more prominent in size, heavy and costlier in price. This commercial machinery in industries requires corn as raw material in tonnes which is fulfilled by larger farmers who grow maize (OPVs) in hectares of land, limiting the production of value-added maize (QPM and bio-fortified maize). Small and marginal farmers of hill, grows bio-fortified maize in small pockets of land, which gets proper isolation and maintains nutritional quality naturally. But, hill farmers with small quantity of raw produce are not able to process it and make value added products like flakes of bio-fortified corn. For this, the hill farmers need scale down machinery so that they can benefit themselves and whole area nutritionally and economically. Keeping in view, a scaled-down version of flaking machine needs to be developed for making corn flakes by following protocols which will comprise of complete scaled-down value chain for QPM flakes. QPM flakes produced will be evaluate for its quality, sensory and storability by adopting standards. Cost economics, nutritional enhancement and livelihood security of stake holder and marginal farmers will be estimated. The machine will be commercialized for its mass production. This type of machine will encourage marginal farmers to grow bio-fortified (QPM) maize which will benefit farmers and consumer both. Further, it can be way forward to compete Indian Maize production with world production. |