India: Capsicum Powder in Green Colour

India is the largest and biggest exporter of chillies (capsicum) in the world with a production of more than 800,000 tonne of dry chilli from an area of over 900,000 hectare. Punjab has area of around 9000 thousand hectares under chilli and produces more than 14 thousand tonnes of chilli every year. Green chilli is a seasonal crop and sometimes farmers get very less profit due to glut. The major hurdle in production of green chilli powder/puree is the standardisation of blenching process for green chillies, which has been overcome by the Central Institute of Post Harvest Engineering and Technology (CIPHET) in Ludhiana. CIPHET has come up with a technology to produce the powder of chillies in green colour like of red chillies, which would also provide better aesthetic look to various products and would improve presentation of these products. The benefits are immense to consumers as well as to the farming community. Maturation stage of chilli into green colour is one month less as compare to chilli turning into red colour. Thus farmers would not require keeping their fields occupied one month more in wait of chillies turning into red. Similarly, green chillies powder/puree would provide more fresh and natural taste than red chillies. The process for production of these products includes stages of destalking of chilli, washing, blanching, wet chilli crushing, pulp extracting and finally pasteurization for killing pathogens. The production cost of one kg of chilli is pegged at around US$3 and a small production unit is likely to cost around US$14000.

Source: The Times of India, Ludhiana, 18^th December 2009