Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) has secured the first prize at Innovate4SDG contest organised by UNDP (United Nation Development Program) Accelerator Lab India for creating a plant-based mock egg. The innovator Prof Kavya Dashora, IIT Delhi was awarded a cash prize worth 3.7 Lakhs and was conferred by Ms Christiane Hieronymus, Embassy of Federal Republic of Germany, New Delhi and Prof K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to the government of India.
UNDP has termed the mock egg as a perfect innovation that will help to accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goals(SDG) including ‘zero hunger' and ‘good health and well-being'.
“The plant based textured foods which resemble egg, fish and chicken have been developed with an aim to address the longstanding battle for malnutrition and clean protein food for people. The mock egg has been developed from very simple farm based crop proteins, which not only looks and tastes like egg but also very close in nutritional profile to a poultry egg,” said Prof Kavya Dashora.
IIT Delhi scientist have also developed meat alternatives for chicken and fish from plant sources including fruits and vegetables. The product was tested on the basis of appearance, taste, bite-size, texture, aroma, flavor, shelf life, nutritional profile and customer preference.
