Making Tamarind balls; our small achievement
Despite the heavy fruiting of tamarind near our university premises, none was conscious about its consumption. They used to become vanished in rotted form into the soil instead of reaching into the mouth of university students. One day, we thought about an idea of harvesting of these tamarind fruits and processing into edible balls.
At first, we were doubtful about the success of our attempt on processing of tamarind fruit into edible balls. With the gathering of our courage, we managed to get involved in its processing. After the successful completion of our attempt on its processing, we got a positive response from both the university students including our friends, seniors and juniors as well as professors. They became so much grateful for our attempt and encouraged us to get involved in such type of work.
We are further hopeful for the success of our attempt in overcoming the unnecessary wastage of locally available fruits and vegetables which are of high nutritional and medicinal value.
Indigenous Fruits; Basis for Food Security
Large proportion of wild and indigenous fruits has gone wasted. Most of the people are ignorant about their method of consumption, nutrition status and other beneficial aspects. They generally get hesitated to follow their consumption practices as a result of confusion regarding their edible status.
These indigenous fruits have been found in decayed and spoiled condition in spite of being utilized to fill the hungry mouths. On the other hand, many people especially of weak economic background are found to be suffering from starvation. In this regard, indigenous fruits can be boon to such people as they are locally available and can be consumed free of cost in the way that they have sufficient information about their method of consumption. They can be used for fresh or table purposes and also as staple food. These fruits can also be used in processed forms such as pickles, jam, jelly, nutritional powder, etc. They have also high value in medicinal purposes. So, our duty comes in processing these fruits using technology suited to home condition, supplying these products to the local market and encouraging people to increase the consumption of such fruits and applying simple and cost effective technology for their processing in their own home condition.
Some of the indigenous fruits found in Nepal and their possible processed products are listed below :
1. Tamarind : juice, balls, jelly
2. Nepali hug plum : pickle, medicinal powder
3. Himalayan Raspberry : juice
4. Chestnut : Flour as staple food
5. Anola : Pickles, nutritional powder
