Odisha’s Chirasmita Bags National Meritorious Award Of NRDC

Balangir: Odia girl Chirasmita Panigrahi has been selected for the National Meritorious Invention Award-2020 by the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC).

Chirasmita was selected for the award for her research work on preserving sugarcane juice for a long time without using heat and chemicals. She is now pursuing her PhD in IIT, Kharagpur.

The sugarcane juice is mostly consumed as a refreshing drink in the summer all over the country. It has to be consumed immediately after its extraction from sugarcane as its colour and flavour get deteriorated fast.

Research scholar Chirasmita has experimented how sugarcane juice can be preserved for three months without using heat and any chemicals in it.

“If we get the juice from sugarcane in natural way, it gets deteriorated soon. That is why I used ozone-assisted old sterilisation technology for the self-stabilisation of the juice without heat or chemical. This technology involves ultra-filtering and ozonization of the freshly extracted microfiltered juice. It will be packaged in an aseptic environment,” she said.

Chirasmita aims at making this method marketable so that it can be used by everybody.

Chirasmita is the wife of Prof Sanjit Nayak from Anandanagar in Balangir district. She is the daughter of Narendra Kumar Panigrahi and Jagruti Panigrahi of the district.