Wonder food with all nutrients

Hoshirapur’s Hash Biotech Farm has been set up by a private limited company,also called Hash Biotech. It is an official working partner (the only corporate entity among over a dozen such partners) of the UN-accredited Inter-governmental Institution for the use of Micro-Algae Spirulina against Malnutrition (IIMSAM).

The farm comprises shallow,man-made ponds,12 measuring 300m×50m and 10 smaller ones measuring 200×50.

“This old faithful plant has provided complete nutrition,unmatched in value,for over 3.5 million years but only in the past 75 years have we become familiar with spirulina,” says Vikrant Sandal,chairman of the Chandigarh-based Hash Group of Companies.

The plant was set up in 2007,was inaugurated by UN special envoy Manish Uprety in 2009,and spent the first five on research and development. “We started selling the product in the market less than a year ago. We are producing 100 tonnes spirulina annually. Harvesting takes place almost daily,and a little carelessness may damage the entire cultivation in the pond,” says Sandal,a mechanical engineer and MBA now based in Dasuya. “We chose Dasuya because the conditions are ideal for its cultivation.”

A plant is being set up to extract powder from dried spirulina; this will then be converted into tablets at a Uttarakhand-based plant. Sandal says the farm’s primary objective is to help the UN achieve its millennium development goal of ‘right to food’ in 1996. “Spirulina is quite affordable and governments can provide it in government schools where 60 to 70 per cent children are anaemic. This can fight malnutrition and hunger among the underprivileged at the grassroots,” he says,adding spirulina is 58 times as rich in iron as spinach is.

He stresses community work undertaken by his group: “Apart from supplying one million tablets to UNAid in collaboration with IIMSAM in the past one year,we have adopted 210 undernourished students,belonging to the economically weaker sections,of St Stephen’s School,Togan,and provide them spirulina tablets free.”

Two hundred cancer patients in Malwa region are being provided phycocyanin. Phycocyanin is an anti-cancer drug whose molecule present in spirulina. The plant produces 3 to 5 tonnes a year.

Punjab Chief Minister P S Badal visited the farm some months ago. Sandal says Badal assured them help in opening more such farms in the state.