Going bananas over plantain flour

It is a development that has caught even the Prime Minister’s awareness. Through his current ‘Mann Ki Baat’ PM Narendra Modi spoke about how homemakers in Karnataka are planning various dishes with banana flour, changing wheat and maida.

Plantain flour — designed with inexperienced bananas — is not new to the area, obtaining been used as toddler food items and as a dietary complement for the aged.

Nevertheless, what is new is the way homemakers are now making use of the flour in novel approaches, dishing up chapatis, gulab jamun, noodles and barfi among the other products.

Jackfruit activist Shree Padre has been partly accountable for the area heading bananas over plantain flour. It all started off when Padre posted a number of lines about Jayambika, a homemaker from Thrissur, in a WhatsApp group of farmers. When she noticed there was small demand for bananas, Jayambika acquired various bunches and powdered them and sold them. Jeesy George of Alleppy Krishi Vijnan Kendra guided her in the preparation of the powder.

Impressed by this put up, Nayana Anand, a homemaker from Tumakuru in Karnataka, far too powdered the plantain rising in her backyard and attempted various dishes with it.

Padre posted Nayana’s working experience and it went viral. Quite a few commenced experimenting with it and building new dishes.

In accordance to Padre, extra than a hundred households have taken up the preparation of banana flour in the previous 1 month, showing the enormous potential it has.

He said banana flour preparation is especially pertinent in belts where by farmers experience glut in output or where by high-quality concerns inhibit sale. It normally takes just three times to convert inexperienced bananas into flour and hence a perishable commodity can be converted into a for a longer time use solution.

Quick to prepare

Two spoons of salt have to be included to a diluted rice starch remedy. Green banana, following peeling, has to be soaked in this remedy for ten minutes, following which it can be sliced and solar dried. A regular mixer grinder at house was used by the farmers to powder it to prepare the flour.

In accordance to Padre, plantain flour could be a feasible micro business for farmers, and cited the example of Ajjappa Kulagod, a farmer from Belagavi district, who has begun generating it and advertising and marketing it domestically.

He claims the extra formidable could established up micro flour mills which could enable both of those the farmer as nicely as the entrepreneur and give area employment. All that such a unit demands by way of expenditure is a slicer, a drier and a pulveriser. It surely appears like an idea to get floured about.