Defence Food Research Laboratory


The Defence Food Research Laboratory is an Indian defence laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation. Located in Mysore, Karnataka, it conducts research and development of technologies and products in the area of food science and technology to cater the varied food challenges for the Indian Armed Forces. DFRL is organised under the Life Sciences Directorate of DRDO. The present director of DFRL is Dr. A D Semwal.

History

"The Defence Food Research Laboratory came into being on 28th December 1961 under the aegis of Defence Research and Development Organisation, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, at Mysore especially to cater to the varied food challenges of Indian Army, Navy, Airforce and other paramilitary forces."

Areas of work

The Laboratory has testing facilities and analytical instruments such as GC, GCMS, GLC, HPLC, Nanodrop spectrophotometer, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Lovibond Tintometer, etc. Animal house enables nutritional and safety evaluation of a variety of foods. Some of the recent additions to the processing equipments include, High pressure processing, Pulsed electric field processing, Khoa making machine, controlled atmosphere system, integrated soya paneer plant, blast freezer and plate freezer lyophilizer, polymer twin screw extruders. Food Scanner, Texturometer, Hydrosorb, Hybridization oven, Image analyser, Thermogravimetric Analyser, Differential scanning colorimeter, Dynamic mechanical analyser, Alveoconsisto graph, Cell counter, Gradient thermal cycler, Scanning electron microscope, FPHLC, Gel Documentation system, IR Spectroscope and Atomic Force microscope.
The Laboratory has developed some analytical test kits for evaluation of deteriorative changes in food such as Meat Testing Kit, Test Kit for E.coli detection, Presumptive Test Kit for Coliform Detection, Acidity Testing Paper Strip, Pesticide detection kit.

Projects and products

Technologies for civilian use

Many of the DFRL foods, born out of innovative state-of-the-art technologies, lend themselves eminently suitable to industrial scale commercial exploitation by enterprising entrepreneurs of different genre. Some of the technologies that have been transferred to entrepreneurs are: