Journal of Food: Microbiology, Safety & Hygiene
Open Access
ISSN: 2476-2059
ISSN: 2476-2059
Shaon Ray Chaudhuri
Tripura University, India
Scientific Tracks Abstracts: J Food Microbiol Saf Hyg
Statement of the Problem: Freshwater scarcity is a major global crisis that the world is facing and agriculture accounts for 80
to 89% of the daily usage. As per the UN report about 40% of the world population would be facing water stress by 2025. The
objective of this study is to slow down this freshwater depletion by converting a nutrient-rich effluent (from dairy industry)
selectively into liquid biofertilizer so that it could replace the use of fresh water as well as fertilizer during cultivation of pulses.
Methodology: Based on the dairy wastewater nature, a tailor-made bacterial consortium was developed using well-characterized
microbes from the environmental origin which could selectively convert the nitrogenous and phosphatic pollutants into
ammonia and phosphate-rich biofertilizer. The consortium was grown as biofilm in the reactor and in absence of any aeration,
selectively converted the influent into plant growth nutrient-rich effluent.
Findings: The process required only 16 hours of incubation time as compared to the 105 hours in a conventional system. The
energy requirement in the process is 1/10 while the space requirement for establishing effluent treatment plant is less than
25% of the conventional one. The biofertilizer could enhance production of mung bean 1.4 folds when compared to chemical
fertilizer.
Conclusion & Significance: This is a technology which could make the dairy effluent treatment not only sustainable but also
profitable while maintaining environmental health and agriculture.
Shaon Ray Chaudhuri has graduated in 2001 from Calcutta University in Molecular Biology. She started working on culture-independent biodiversity screening and soon developed her own group which specializes in developing a microbial solution for wastewater treatment. She started her career as a faculty in 2004 in Department of Biotechnology, West Bengal University of Technology, India and moved to Department of Microbiology, Tripura (Central) University, India in 2015. She did her Post-doctoral training at Jadavpur University, India; Technical University of Munich, Germany; Humboldt University Berlin. Her group has been working in the area of Microbial Technology from 2004 onwards and has published 51 papers, filed 10 patents while transferred 5 technologies to industries. She has 4 international awarded patents. 9 students have graduated from her laboratory while 7 are working in the group.
E-mail: shaon.raychaudhuri@gmail.com