Aligning Academic and Industry/Agricultural Research

By Archie D’Souza

Thursday, November 8, 2012

I had the good fortune of reading the account of how Yahoo Labs is aligning academic and industrial research.  (See link below) While there are several other companies that are working in this direction, a lot more need to do the same.  I have written on this subject in the past and continue to do so.  Do click on the links below to read these articles.

http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine-articles-in/Aligning_Academic__and_Industry_Research-ZPUL134855316.html?utm_campaign=magazinenovissue&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Subscriber

http://sunriseacademyonline.blogspot.in/2012/10/why-management-engineering-education-in.html

Here are some of the suggestions to make management and engineering education more relevant to industry and agriculture:

·         3 years mandatory industrial experience before a student seeks a management degree

·         2 months compulsory internship for every engineering and management student

·         At least 50% (I would prefer 100%) of the faculty members in both engineering and management colleges should have a minimum of 10 years industrial experience

·         Raise the salary levels of instructors to industry standards to attract the best talent into teaching.  Several management colleges have started this practice and the results are very heartening

·         Consider a person’s industrial experience akin to qualifications.  E.g. a person who’s been in a management position for 10 years should be recognised as an MBA and allowed to teach in MBA programmes

·         Raise the level of teacher training

One thing I did mention then but not among the bulleted points was aligning industrial and agricultural research with academics.  Let me be more specific.  I will refer to industries that I have been directly or indirectly, as a service provider, involved in and this includes agriculture.  Click on the links above to read the full articles.

I was personally involved in a project with the Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) of the Indian union government’s Ministry of Commerce & Industry offering logistics solutions to exporters of flowers and other perishable agricultural products.  This was quite a challenge from several angles.  One, freight rates had to be as low as possible.  Two, flowers, live plants and other similar products breathe and the resulting metabolism causes temperatures to rise resulting is decay of the product.  So, how do we tackle this problem?

With flowers there was a solution where if the temperature range was maintained between 4⁰ & 10⁰C the flowers would stop breathing and this would result in very slow decay lengthening the shelf-life of the flowers.  There was a catch though.  If, at any stage, the temperatures exceeded the maximum of that range the metabolism and resulting decay would commence all over again and nothing could be done to stop it.  There’s a very simple reason for this.  Any living thing gives out hot air while exhaling.  Temperatures could not go below the range because the moisture in the flowers would freeze resulting in the petals becoming very brittle and therefore useless.  So, how was this problem tackled?

I visited some of the bigger farms to see what exactly the practices there were.  I realised that flower stems were cut and packed and while they were still warm, loaded on refrigerated trucks and brought to the airport.  In spite of the temperatures in the trucks being kept at a level of between 4⁰ & 7⁰ C, the temperatures of the flowers in the packages were over 16⁰ and rising.  The result was reduced shelf-life and hence, lower prices to the grower-exporters.  The reason was not hard to see.  The temperatures were already above the threshold when the stems were cut.

I discussed the matter with a few scientists from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore.  Thanks to APEDA, I had access to them on any working day.  They came up with a simple but brilliant solution.  They said that temperatures must be brought down to 4⁰ but not lower before the flowers were packed.  The suggestion was to put the stems in buckets of water and lower the temperature of the chamber.  The temperatures had to be recorded at the stems and not elsewhere.  Once the temperature reached the desired lever, not lower, the stems could be packed.  However, it was very important that the temperatures in the trucks too were brought down to 4⁰ and the same maintained throughout the transport chain.

Once exporters started following this practice, thanks to flowers arriving at the destination fresher and guaranteeing a longer shelf-life, they got much better prices for their produce.  As I had worked on rural development projects in Maharashtra and interacted with the extension wing of the agricultural university in Pune there, I knew of this service which several people were not even aware of.  Here was a classic case of research helping grower-exporters.

This happened in the state of Karnataka.  I had another experience in the state of Maharashtra which I shall recount on another occasion.  Right now, I wish to conclude that academics and agriculture or industry are not really very far apart and it is certainly possible for one to reach the other.