Dear Friends,

I am humbled, honored and privileged to assume the office of National President of Oil Technologists Association of India. I am deeply grateful to my predecessors for their leadership and outstanding contributions. I am inspired by their commitment to OTAI and all of their achievements. Indeed, the growth of OTAI has been propelled collectively by the individuals and all the past presidents and members of CEC and ZECs. I look forward to continuing this important work towards fulfilling the mission of OTAI.
OTAI has just celebrated 75 years as an organization and has a long list of achievements. May I assure you I will leave no stone unturned to take the glorious legacy forward? I will make every possible effort and use every possible resource to accomplish new heights.
In 2020, the largest health and economic crisis in recent history forced business across sectors into extraordinary measures to protect their people and maintain operations. As vaccines now begin to slowly roll out across the world, offering hope for an end to a pandemic that’s devastated lives and lively hoods around the world, considering the food supply chain, one of the most important sectors of the economy, it has been seen that COVID-19 has an impact on the whole process from farm to the consumer. In the light of the recent challenge in food supply chain, there is now considerable concern about all the five stages, including agriculture production, post-harvest handling, processing, distribution/retail/service and consumption.

Two systems are being for the food supply chain regarding food quality and safety. The first one is based on regulations and laws that use mandatory standards which are inspected by state agencies. The second one is relying on voluntary which are defined by market laws or international associations. Significant effects of a pandemic on consumer behavior are being observed. It is noticed that their food buying behavior has changed because of their will to consume healthy foods without exceeding the normal budget. Consumers adopted a basic approach of returning to healthy and safe food products, which also contain ingredients that provide nutritional supplements before the pandemic, one-third of all food produced for human consumption was lost or wasted across the food supply chain stages. Therefore, food waste has gained attention than ever before and there is a need for new strategies for the food supply chain. A valuable bioactive component such as phenols, carotenoids, pectins, flavonoids, essential oils, glucosinolates, isothiocyanates and whey protein isolates can be derived from food wastes to reutilize them in the food chain. These functional compounds can be used as preservatives, gelling agents or nutritional supplements. Conventional or innovative techniques can be applied in the extractions, fractionation and isolation stages of bioactive components from food wastes.

OTAI, during my tenure of the next three years, will primarily focus on helping lipids industry through leveraging technology to build resilience and accelerate recovery and promote further growth. Technology is an important enabler for integration of demand-side and supply-side channels.

The key policy and action agenda issues of OTAI are:

• 1. Providing technology support to the industry for the manufacture of the healthy, nutritious and safe oils/fats products.
• 2. Providing technology support to the national mission on edible oils to boost its domestic production for the self-sufficiency towards achieving edible oil security.
• 3. Mobilizing Science, technology and innovation to achieve cleaner, greener and bluer environment towards the fulfilment of the goal of sustainable development.

Thank You!
Jai Hind!

Dwijendra Mathur
National President, OTAI