Nagpur : Sustainable and Environmental Friendly Method of Rose Water Extraction for Farmers Demonstrated by Vikrant Katekar from CTARA, IIT Bombay at Gramayan exhibition, Nagpur The four-day Gramayan Seva Pradarshan, an exhibition of rural initiatives, is now taking place at Ram Nagar Ground, Nagpur. The 150-stall show, which started on Thursday, depicts diverse aspects of rural social and economic life.
It is an effort organised by Gramayan Pratishthan to give a forum for initiatives that have begun and are prospering in rural parts of Vidarbha and a few border villages of Madhya Pradesh. In this exhibition, CTARA, IIT Bombay also demonstrated a small sustainable business model for rose farmers.
Vikrant Katekar mentioned that, after interacting with many rose farmers, one prominent question has been found farmer’s 10 to 15% of rose flowers are wasted daily. This waste is while picking the flowers from the plant, during transportation, and sometimes entire flowers are not sold.
Then farmers either sell them at a low price or through them in the market, which increases the solid waste. To address this difficulty and convert the waste to income for rose farmer’s livelihood, Vikrant Katekar from CTARA, IIT Bombay, developed a cost-effective solar thermal hydrodistillation system that processes rose flowers and convert flowers into pure chemical-free rosewater. Vikrant performed all laboratory tests and got excellent results. The prepared rosewater has a pleasant odour and amazing skin effect of reducing tanning and pigmentation. It has antiaging and anti-wrinkle characteristics also.
