Chennai Student’s Affordable Invention Can Check Purity of Organic Food

With Organic food getting traction all over the world, we need to take a closer look at these eatables. The Indian domestic market for organic food is estimated to be around Rs 40,000 million($540 million) which is likely to reach Rs 120,000 million($1.6 billion) by 2020 according to EY report.

With growing demands to source organic edibles, how organic is our food remains a elusive question in our minds. There are news reports every now and then, especially near festival season, that so called ‘organic’ food were actually grown using fertilisers and contain pesticides.

Well not to worry, to put these doubts to rest, Hemalatha Rajendran, who holds a B-Tech in biotechnology from St Joseph’s College of Engineering, Chennai, designed a simple test that can be used to detect pesticides in food.

For her innovation, Hemalatha has been awarded the Innovative Project Award by the Indian National Academy of Engineering. The test can also determine the purity of an organic substance.

Hemalatha, who graduated in 2018, started working on her food testing apparatus as her father, a bus driver with the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, encouraged her to develop something that would be useful for every ordinary citizen. Hemalatha decided to work on food adulteration and focused on organic food.

She says, “I wanted to make something that will help us in our day-to-day life, and will also be affordable.”

She first started with checking milk for adulteration using the process she had developed. She used A4 sheets like litmus paper with a reagent and one had to just dip this paper in the milk to check if it was adulterated or not. The strips changed colour in adulterated milk.

She used her paper coated with the regent she discovered to test pesticides in food items and realised it worked. It also detected the presence of urea in food products.

She further adds, “Nowadays, most of the milk we consume is contaminated with urea, detergent, soda and so on. They are added to increase the stability and the colour. The pesticide detection tool is made from decolourised sketch cartridge, in which the reagent is introduced. “

The colour strip currently has a stability of 10 days and costs Rs 5 per 10 strips. And since the strips are based on the colorimetric method, even a common man can use it

The strip turns from pale yellow to a brighter shade if there is presence of urea in the milk. To test vegetables and fruits, the extract of either can be poured as drops on the strip. If it turns blue, it indicates the presence of chemicals.

Hemalatha wants to work with the DRDO and at the same time, enhance the shelf life of her product. She will carry out her research further at ARMATS Biotek Training and Research Institute’s laboratory in Guindy.

Picture source edexlive