The Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) is an Indian defence laboratory of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). 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.
Research and development in food science and technology
Studies in the development of convenience foods, preservation of foods, food safety, food packaging, and studies in the spoilage of foods and safety of processed foods
Production and supply of processed foods on a limited scale to the Armed Forces and other bodies for national missions
Toxicological, nutritional, and biochemical studies
Development of pack rations, their quality assurance methods
Preservation and packaging methods for long-distance transportation of perishable products
Evaluation of nutritional requirements of troops deployed under different climatic conditions
The Laboratory has testing facilities and analytical instruments such as GC, GCMS, GLC, HPLC, Nanodropspectrophotometer, 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.[7]
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:
