Team:IISER-Mohali/Human Practices
Integrated
Human Practices
“There is no point in doing Science, if you do it in isolation!”
“Science for Society” has been our motto from the word “GO!” and therefore our human-centered project follows a “LEARN->DEVELOP->TEST->RELEARN” cycle.
India is one of the world's leading agrarian economies. In this developing nation, the primary sector is responsible for sustaining the second largest population in the world (a means of livelihood for nearly half of them), and contributing more than 17% to the economy. Food grains like rice, wheat and millets constitute an important part of our staple diet. Through the efforts of agencies like the Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering & Technology (CIPHET), Department of Agriculture Cooperation & Farmers Welfare (DAC), Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Directorate of Marketing & Inspection (DMI), and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), we’ve seen a regular increase in their yield, but there remains much to be done to minimize losses at the various levels of production.Upon research we found that among the various reasons for losses faced by our farmers before harvesting:
*Diseases eg. Yellow rust
*Ill-timed rain.
*Pest infestation - Schistocerca gregaria (Desert locust) in wheat farms.
These losses are prevalent and we thank all the scientists and iGEM teams who have worked on them, BUT! There exists another source of loss that goes unseen and is often unchecked, these losses occur once good quality grains have been harvested - POST HARVEST LOSSES!
“This means that good quality grains fit for consumption simply go to waste!”
-Representative from Food Corporation of India
In India, post-harvest losses amount to 12 to 16 million metric tons of food grains each year. Severely impacted of these are grains like rice, wheat, and millets which constitute an important part of our staple diet. Starvation apart, the resulting monetary losses to farmers are in the excess of Rs.50,000 crores annually. Improper storage is the main problem to be addressed, since it contributes to more than 30% of the total post-harvest loss.
But we needed to know what these numbers mean to us and to people they affect.
“There is no point in doing Science, if you do it in isolation!”
Post-harvest losses experienced by farmers
We went straight to the people who faced the problem. On interacting with the farmers of Chilla, Raipur Khurd, and Durali, we were able to see that since they lacked sealed tanks to store grains their hard earned grains were open to attacks by rats. They would store their grains in jute sacks which the rats would rip open, contaminating the whole sack. The farmers had no choice but to throw them away. These losses are not recorded by formal authorities, hence the numbers that we know are just the tip of the iceberg. On discussing with them, we understood that whatever we may make, it would have to be deployed in store houses with sacks of grains, where multiple possible entry points exist for the rats.
“The loss is beyond measure! How much ever is told is less!”
- Village Head, Raipur Khurd.
Large Government Granaries on FearOmone
Food Corporation of India and Central Warehousing Corporation, India.
Our interaction with the farmers made us realize that farmers kept large amounts of grains for a few weeks followed by which they would hold a portion of it and the rest would be pooled by granaries maintained by the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the Punjab Mandi Board, and the Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) of India. Interacting with Mr. Anurag Tripathi, Regional Manager, CWC, Chandigarh and Mr.Surendra Singh Takshak, DGM, FCI, Chandigarh (who are in charge of the preservation of over 84 million metric tons of tons of wheat and paddy) gave us an idea of the scale of the “Rat Menace”, which amounted to a whopping 1 million Metric Tons of grains. The way they preserved grains was by fumigating the warehouses with rodenticides and using poison tablets like Aluminum Phosphide.
*http://fci.gov.in/storages.php
*Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and Ministry of Food Processing Industries
“We had a problem and the drive to solve it, but we needed to be scientifically sound”
Take of Academia on post-harvest losses
We had a possible solution and a vague idea of how to accomplish it, but our impulse would not be sufficient, we needed guidance from the scientific community. Therefore, we sought guidance from Plant Biologists Dr.Ram Yadav and Dr.Santosh Satbhai, who were not only aware of the “RAT MENACE” in the agriculture sector, but also had the scientific knowledge to validate our idea. They gave us tips and points to watch out for. Their input along with the guidance of our PIs made our idea watertight, which was essential in driving our project to success.
“Rats are smart, we need to be smarter! Time to get to work!”
RATTEL
-Novel Software for product deployment.
It is common knowledge that rats are smart. A rat if taken away from its nesting ground and left within one kilometer, can come back without getting lost.Rat behavior is complex, no doubt.
They fear open grounds, have memory, and show curiosity to new things. These behaviors are a function of their internal parameters like hunger and risk taking ability.
Given this complex organism that we intend to deal with along with the non-trivial environment where our product would be deployed, we were sure we would need to understand the behavior of rats in response to a diffusing pheromone field.
This information would allow us to find the most optimum location for deployment of our device, given the locations of the stacks of grains in a storehouse, the multiple entry points, and the environmental parameters in which our device is deployed.
TOMCAT Deployment using RATTEL
Visualizing Trapping using RATTEL
We used this software, to guide the farmers as to where they are to place the device in order to extract the most use out of every effused molecule of Felinine. We were happy to see that our software worked and know that it will enhance the effectiveness of our device in inducing fear responses in rats.
Hardware Evolution for efficient deployment of FearOmone
Our initial idea was to follow a popular approach - deploy the yeast on a paper-based device. We had also planned to expand the idea into a novel saw-tooth design to expand the surface area for yeast growth.Our interaction with the farmers made us realize that the conditions in which the yeast was to be deployed were harsh; a paper-based device would not survive long, furthermore, once the yeast scent would die out, the rat might damage the paper leading to Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) release, which is a big NO! NO!
We had to make a better design, which could last in storehouse conditions without risking the release of GMOs. After brainstorming, we came up with TOMCAT (our Topologically OptiMized Click Activated Design), a sealed device which would store yeast spores and release them over solid media without being exposed to the environment, on the click of a button. The pheromone produced would pass through a one way filter and create the Fearomone field which would induce fear responses in the rats. This was expanded to a parallel device which could store the scent that could be sprayed in granaries.
On interacting with the Food Corporation of India, we came to understand that the deployment strategy that was perfect for the farmers' storehouses would not be implementable in the large granaries maintained by the FCI,the strategy that they primarily used was Fumigation of the grains with chemical rodenticides.
All the workers associated with the FCI, CWC, and Punjab Mandi Board were trained for the above, and employing TOM-CAT would be unsuccessful for 3 reasons:
*The uneducated workers wouldn't be able to use the software “RATTEL”.
*The workers were trained to fumigate the grains with sprays,therefore, our solution must demand minimum changes to pre- existing human resources.
*Since TOM-CAT requires low maintenance, the workers would be rendered unemployed, an unfavorable consequence.
Hence, we had to adapt our solution to the organizational framework of the FCI, CWC, and the Punjab Mandi Board.
Therefore, we planned to “THINK BIG” and extract the Felinine from the yeast and store it in liquid form in High Pressure Tanks, which could replace the Chemical Sprays without causing the slightest change in the organizational framework of the Large Store houses.
Complete Eradication of the “Rat Menace” - BIOREACTOR.
Bioreactor for large-scale production of Felinine
To scale-up our solution so that it may be applied to the largest store houses at the cheapest production cost, we planned to industrialize the process of Felinine production, for which we have created the most optimal BIOREACTOR.
The BIOREACTOR uses a regular supply of nutrients and works in a Batch-cum-Continuous manner to produce Felinine in large quantities.This can be deployed in High Pressure Sprays and also be stored in hydrogels which would allow for the slow release of the pheromone from the hydrogel, making sure that the pheromone stays in the environment for a long time.
STAKEHOLDERS INVOLVED IN POST-HARVEST LOSSES MEETUP:
Over the course of our iGEM Project we got to interact with people hailing form diverse backgrounds, working in different and often contrasting fields, whose dreams, aspirations and perspective were in contrast to each other, from Farmers, who spend their whole day on the fields, to officers in the Indian Administrative Service, who might not see an unpaved road for months at a stretch.
Yet, ALL OF THEM WERE OUR STAKEHOLDERS! We could meet all of them individually and learn as to what they expected from us, but neither did we meet all of them together nor do they come across each other in their day-to-day lives.We understood that all these stakeholders had a skewed and differentiated opinion of the problem, existing solutions, and our solution.There was a huge communication gap between all the stakeholders. In order to achieve a holistic picture, we needed to bring all of our Stakeholders under a common roof to discuss and debate, and this is exactly what we did!
We invited Farmers, officials from the CWC, FCI, Punjab Mandi Board, Academicians and Students for a panel discussion titled “Ideas on Post Harvest losses and Grain Storage in India”
It was a successful endeavor which gave us many ideas, especially on the use of TOMCAT in trapping rats.
“Why don’t you use your project to trap, like pheromone traps farmers use to catch insects, such as moths” -Regional Manager, Punjab Mandi Board
In a never before seen venture, it also introduced our Stakeholders to each other which allowed all of us to understand our roles in solving the “RAT MENACE”.