Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar inaugurated the government’s first honey testing lab at the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in Anand district of Gujarat with the support of National Bee Board (NBB).

Based on the parameters notified by FSSAI, the NDDB has set-up this state-of-the-art lab with all the facilities and developed the test methods/protocols, which have been accredited by National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL). FSSAI has now notified new standards of honey, bee wax and royal jelly.

Adulteration is a major problem and honey is being adulterated with high fructose corn syrup or rice, tapioca, sugarcane and beet syrup that are cheaper and resemble honey in physico-chemical properties.

The establishment of the honey testing laboratory will help for quality production of honey and its export to other countries.

The agriculture minister further emphasised on increasing bee colonies, honey bee production, processing, marketing and export, which would significantly contribute to GDP and boosting the rural economy.

Sweet Revolution

Following the call for a ‘Sweet Revolution’ by PM Narendra Modi in 2017, the government has been encouraging large numbers of farmers for production and marketing of honey and earn more profit in agriculture.

As per the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) database, in 2017-18, India ranked eighth in the world in terms of honey production (64,900 tonnes), while China stood first with a production level of 551,000 tonnes.

The National Mission for Beekeeping is being implemented through the National Bee Board and the ministry has taken up several activities to promote bee keeping under ‘Mission on Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH)’.

National Beekeeping and Honey Mission

National Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM) is a central sector scheme for overall promotion and development of scientific beekeeping and production of quality honey and other beehive products. 

It has three Mini Missions:

1) Mini Mission-I: Under this Mission, thrust will be given on production and productivity improvement of various crops through pollination assisted by adoption of scientific beekeeping.

2) Mini Mission-II: This Mission will concentrate on post harvest management of beekeeping/ beehive products including collection, processing, storage, marketing, value addition, etc with a thrust to develop requisite infrastructural facilities for these activities

3) Mini Mission-III: This Mission will concentrate on research & technology generation for different regions/states/agro-climatic and socio-economic conditions.

Objectives of NBHM: 

* Promoting holistic growth of the beekeeping industry for income and employment generation, providing livelihood support to farm and non-farm households and to enhance agriculture/ horticulture production.

* Developing additional infrastructural facilities for developing quality nucleus stock of honey bees, multiplication of stock by bee breeders, setting up of disease diagnostic labs, beekeeping equipment manufacturing units, post-harvest and marketing infrastructures including quality control labs individually as well as by setting up of Integrated Beekeeping Development Centres (IBDCs)/ Centres of Excellence (CoEs) on Beekeeping.

* To promote, develop and disseminate latest and state-of-the-art technologies and skill development in the beekeeping industry for production of honey and other high value beehive products.

* Empowerment of women through beekeeping. 

* To maximise, economic, ecological and social benefits by diversification through beekeeping by production of higher quantity and good quality honey and other high value beehive products, such as bee wax, bee pollen, propolis, royal jelly, comb honey, bee venom, etc for domestic and export market.

National Dairy Development Board

The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) was established in 1965 with headquarters in Anand. Verghese Kurien was the founder chairman of NDDB from 1965 to 1998. He is the architect of India’s ‘White Revolution’. NDDB launched Operation Flood in 1970 which is considered to be the world’s largest dairy development programme.

NDDB is playing a crucial role in the implementation of National Dairy Plan (NDP) and Dairy Processing and Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF).

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store