The ninth edition of the International Food Convention – IFCON-2023 – will be held in Mysuru from December 7 to 10. This year’s theme of the convention is “TRIMSAFE – Technology Re-engineering for Innovation and Mitigating the risk for a Safe, sustainable, Affordable and secure Food Ecosystem.”
Organised by the Association of Food Scientists and Technologists of India (AFSTI) with support from the CSIR-CFTRI, DRDO-DFRL, and CSIR-Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, Lucknow, the four-day convention will be inaugurated by ISRO Chairman Dr S Somnath.
Dr. N. Kalaiselvi, Director General, CSIR, New Delhi will be delivering her address as the chief guest in a virtual mode. Pramoda Devi Wadiyar of the erstwhile Mysuru royal family will inaugurate the exhibition. CSIR-CFTRI Director Sridevi Annapurna Singh, CSIR-IITR Director and AFSTI President Dr. N. Bhaskar, DRDO-DFRL Director Anil Semwal and other dignitaries will be present.
The formal inauguration of the convention will be held at the KSOU Convocation hall at 5 p.m. on Thursday, December 7.
Before the inaugural session, Prof. M. Swaminathan Padma awardee lecture series will be inaugurated and the first lecture of the series will be delivered by Dr. Shashank Joshi, a Padma Shri awardee, who is a consultant endocrine and metabolic physician from Mumbai, at 3 p.m. on December 7.
The IFCON is organised once in five years and the last edition was in 2018 in Mysuru. The four-day conference has already attracted over 2,500 registrations with over 200 delegates from abroad participating and also making presentations.
During the convention, the prestigious AFSTI annual awards will be presented to the achievers in the field of food science and technology. The awards will be presented on the inaugural day and the popular best oral and the poster presentations will be given awards during the valedictory function.
The 18 sub-themes of the convention include chemistry of foods; food for health and wellness; millet as nutri cereals; innovative and intelligent engineering and technological advances in the food chain; food ingredients, enzymes, and additives; green food processing, preservation, and sustainable packaging solutions, future foods, traditional and ethnic foods; dairy and animal food products; food grains and baking technology; food supply chain logistics; food microbiology; food biotechnology and fermentation process.
The exhibition which will have over 100 stalls will be held on December 8 and 9 on the CFTRI campus. The public is allowed to visit the expo on day one from 1 to 5 p.m. and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on December 9. A special pavilion on millets has been organised since the International Year of Millets is coming to a close, said CSIR-IITR Director Dr. N. Bhaskar.
The U.S. Embassy is holding a session on higher education opportunities in the area of food processing. Over 1,500 students from across the country will be participating in the session where there will be presentations on the courses in various universities in the U.S.
At the expo, there will be a CSIR pavilion where the achievements of the CSIR labs will be showcased. FSSAI will also be putting up its stall at the expo, said Dr. Bhaskar.
Daily, from December 7 to 10, a two-hour job mela will be organised for the students at the CFTRI campus. On the concluding day, a walkathon will be held in the campus from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Dr. Sridevi Annapurna Singh said the food start-ups working on the CFTRI campus will also be displaying their products at the expo. Also, the millet products of the woman SHG in Bilikere near Mysuru will be displaying its products. IFCON organising secretary Dr. Suresh D. Sakhare and senior Principal Scientist Dr. Ramesh were present.
