Hunnarshala Foundation is working with farmers in rural communities in Gujarat, India. Hunnarshala Foundation is collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to implement a project to evaluate the performance of a new fruit and vegetable storage chamber and understand the impact of this low-cost cooling and storage solutions in helping to reduce post-harvest losses for fruits and vegetables at various stages along the relevant value chains. The lack of affordable and effective post-harvest vegetable cooling and storage poses a significant challenge for small holder farmers that can lead to vegetable spoilage, reduced income, and lost time. Most techniques for cooling and storing vegetables rely on electricity, which is either unaffordable or not available for many small holder farmers, especially those living in remote areas are very low a day.
At Hunnarshala campus with use of second-hand shipping 20 feet container, an evaporative cooling chamber was made with insulation of walls inside and with use of three fans and cooling pad. Approximate 3000 kg of vegetable storage capacity created inside.
This system kept for trial with vegetable of different type for seven days in summer and winter with automatic temperature and loggers and monitored closely. Results were very encouraging as compared to vegetables kept in normal room condition. Inside vegetable remain fresh for four to seven days based on type of vegetable as compared to outside which does not survive for more than two days.
What next?
Based on the result now Aina team is working on small portable systems for small vegetable vendor and small farmers for 500 kg with solar power and experiment is going on with support from Vegcool, a non-profit organisation.
