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Food irradiation centres: Indian agriculture association Hindustan Agro Co-op
Ltd and United Innovation Corp of Russia signed an agreement to set up a
network of integrated irradiation centres for food products in India. United
Innovation Corp is a subsidiary of state-run nuclear corporation Rosatom.

For the uninitiated, irradiation is a technology that helps safely preserve food
for longer period of time. India incurs a loss of Rs 2.5 lakh crore in food items
like fruits, vegetables, meat, cereals, pulses and floriculture due to lack of cold
storage facilities or storage constraints, according to a report in IANS. The
agreement is an attempt to address this issue.

The centres will be managed by an India-Russia joint venture (JV) where

Hindustan Agro will have the majority 51 percent stakeholding. The irradiation
centre at Rahuri in Maharashtra, run by Hindustan Agro farmers cooperative
with with the help of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, will be be upgraded
under this agreement.

According to Denis Cherednichenko, CEO, United Innovation, it is a landmark

agreement and signals a move beyond the existing Russo-Indian cooperation on
building nuclear power plants like Rosatom's Kudankulam project in Tamil
Nadu.

Under the around 25 such integrated infrastructure irradiation centres will be set
up in India. Each plant will have grading, processing, packaging, cold storage
and export facility. The plan is to set up these plants each with 35,000 tonne to
40,000 tonne capacity per annum in a period of around 5 years