Commemorating 75 glorious years of the India’s independence, as ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’ the ICAR-IISR, Indore has conducted a webinar on ‘Specialty Soybean Varieties for Food Nutritional Security’ on 26.08.2021 under the theme of ‘Food and Nutritional Security for Farmers’ consequent on the directive received from Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi.
About 750 participants including progressive farmers, scientists, officers from agricultural and allied department as well as soybean based industries attended the webinar using online zoom platform which also was telecasted simultaneously on the YouTube channel of the institute.
On the occasion, Acting Director of the Institute
Nita Khandekar spoke about the gross under-utilization of soybean for protein. She mentioned that it is a vegetarian source of complete protein and has immense nutritional benefits that eh speaker of the day would be covering. Its quality, makes it an ideal option to supplement the protein for those who need it particularly in the rural/urban areas especially those living below poverty. According to her, various traditional food items like soymilk, soy paneer, yoghurt, snacks etc. can be prepared using soybean for increasing their nutritional properties through fortification. BU Dupare, the chairman of the organizing committee, while welcoming the participants, briefed about various efforts being undertaken by the ICAR-IISR for promotion of soybean processing techniques as well as soybean varieties suitable for food uses.
The speaker of this webinar, Vineet Kumar, Principal Scientist, initially discussed about the need and nutritional properties of specialty soybean varieties of soybean developed by ICAR-Indian Institute of Soybean which if promoted can bring desirable changes in the health of those who cannot afford protein rich food items.
