We all know Honey is sweet, viscous liquid food that is dark golden in color, and it is produced in the honey sacs of various bees from the nectar of flowers. India Is the world’s 2nd largest honey producer. It has 19.34 lakh honey bee colonies and produces about 133,200 metric tonnes of honey every year.
India, one of the world’s top honey exporters, exported 74,413 MT of honey in 2021–2022 for a total of Rs 1221.17 crore. Even now we are to utilizing our full potential.
But to achieve the highest capability India Honey Alliance (IHA) and the National Institute of Food Technology & Entrepreneurship Management (NIFTEM) have joined hands to strengthen the creation of a robust honey ecosystem in India.
📜 About India Honey Alliance (IHA)
India Honey Alliance (IHA) is a unified platform to ensure maximum benefits to the consumer and growth for the entire value chain of the honey industry. IHA is an all-inclusive alliance of stakeholders from honey companies, exporters, bee-keepers, farmers, processors, and scientific domain experts. All the members are committed to the highest standards of quality and are compliant with the current stringent Indian and global standards. IHA is committed to working towards developing and strengthening the ecosystem for Indian honey. IHA in collaboration with Indian and International experts would continue to promote science-based quality standards for Indian honey to improve the current practices of sourcing, testing, packaging, etc. to ensure that Indian honey becomes the preferred choice.
📝 About NIFTEM
The institute intends to act as a center of excellence and an apex world-class center of global standards in the area of food technology and management. It will cater to the needs of various stakeholders such as entrepreneurs, industries, exporters, policymakers, government, and existing institutions. NIFTEM being an apex institution under the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has developed strong linkages with industries.
🤝 Aim of Collaboration
The agreement will deal with identification and mutual collaboration in the areas of
- Testing systems for honey,
- Research and data analysis,
- Training facilitation, and
- Any emerging area in the related fields.
This will be a long-term partnership in which both institutions will work toward creating a scientific system for food safety and nutrition for honey and bee-keeping products across the country. NIFTEM has recently got the tag of Institute of National Importance and will use its academic training center to train the bee-keeping and honey community and FBOs, along with assisting in the creation of a robust scientific ecosystem for all related products.
Chindi Vasudevappa, vice chancellor, NIFTEM
We are looking forward to collaborating with India Honey Alliance (IHA) in their vision to support and strengthen the honey ecosystem. Together with IHA, we aim to establish and set up industry benchmarks for the quality, authenticity, and safety of Indian honey and work towards creating robust, affordable, and accessible technology for the honey industry. Together, we look forward to awareness activities which will promote knowledge and information dissemination & training of stakeholders.
The International Centre of Excellence in Food Safety & Quality at NIFTEM would be utilized as the National Reference Laboratory of IHA for competence for honey authenticity, method development, proficiency testing, and much more.
NIFTEM will also function as the academic partner of IHA for developing the content and conducting the training, for all areas of the honey value chain, through a joint certification program.
Deepak Jolly, general secretary, of IHA, said,
The honey industry in India has a huge potential to grow. However, we have not been able to take full advantage of the available opportunities in the sector, and there is a long way to go when organizing the fragmented industry. There are several challenges at the ground level, which include training and capacity framework, understanding & rollout of appropriate testing methodology, quality, authenticity, and much more. Our partnership with NIFTEM is a step forward in addressing many such issues. We hope this collaboration will be highly fruitful and result in a win-win for IHA and NIFTEM
Facilities at NIFTEM would be very much helpful for IHA as a Centre for Training of Trainers (ToT) in various training courses, food analysts, and other laboratory personnel and as a training partner for various courses and modules as mutually agreed.
The main aim of this partnership is to develop an adequate number of trained and certified honey & bee-keeping professionals for the country’s honey industry. Further, IHA will also assist NIFTEM in setting up the bee-keeping park in NIFTEM through the utilization of available resources.
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