Farmers trained to pack ‘ready to cook unripe Jackfruits’

April 7: Unripe jackfruits are in high demand because of its high nutritional value. It is time for farmers to think of value addition to the fruit, and techniques to increase its shelf life.
Bondala Yathish Shetty a techie—who quit his high paying job for the sake of the agriculture sector, organised a training programme on how to add value to unripe jackfruit and prepare ready-to-cook unripe jackfruit packets. He said that the jackfruit is available in large quantities in villages but farmers are not getting a good price. About 50 farmers have registered themselves with the website.
A training programme was held at Bramhana Parishat, B.C. Road on Sunday, where farmers got a chance to learn about adding value to unripe jackfruit.
Shivanna Sakharayapatna from Parivarthan Trust was the resource person for the training programme. He has been working on adding value to jackfruit for almost 10 years now. He said that the simple technique required for processing an unripe jackfruit of 2-3 kg requires lemon water. The unripe jackfruit is cut open using a stainless steel knife and the pieces are kept in a vessel filled with lime water and then the unripe jackfruit is peeled and it is transferred to a pouch and sealed. The shelf life of these packets is three days and has to be stored a cool & dry place.