Utilizing all aspects of the jackfruit, this lady agripreneur from Kerala makes 400 items

From pasta, chocolate, burger patties, and vermicelli, to cakes, Rajasree R from Kerala utilizes the universal jackfruit to make 400 items under the brand, Fruit N Root.

A 2019 piece, revealed within the Guardian, had jack fruit lovers in Asian nations and across the globe up in arms, once known as the “ugly duckling story, a fruit that won the lottery”. The common-or-garden jack fruit, found copiously in the backyards of homes in several Indian states, as well as Kerala, wherever the annual production of jack fruit is around 190.14 thousand tonnes, has the last laugh.

Each part of the jack fruit, from the thorns to its outer skin, is wont to build an edible product. And who ought to understand this higher than Rajasree R, an agripreneur from Thiruvananthapuram, who produces four hundred types of merchandise made up of the fruit?

Marketed beneath the whole name, Fruit N Root, these products are a result of Rajasree’s varied experiments and therefore the constant drive to innovate. Each year, once I came home on vacation, my mother want to pack dried jack fruit and merchandise made up of the flesh and therefore the seeds, so I will use them through the year.” Most of the jack fruit would go waste attributable to the abundance and rather than the standard payasam, jack fruit preserve (chakkavaratti), Rajasree wished to try and do one thing innovative.

“After I came back, I procured the food license to dry the jack fruit and build products.

I believed of creating an alimentary paste from jack fruit flour, that I used to be certain would be a success with the younger generation that was health-conscious and searching for varieties of a superfood,” she says. “They tutored American state a way to dehydrate the jack fruit and make the powder that would be ultimately wont to make pasta.

They conjointly inspired me to participate during a competition for various types of jack fruit,” she says. Rather than creating regular stuff, Rajasree went all out and experimented and gave soup, chapati, bonda, chocolate, burger patty, ladoo, etc., created out of various elements of the jack fruit.

Rajasree had detected of the Central Tuber Crops analysis Institute (CTCRI) in Sreekaryam in the Thiruvananthapuram district and its effort in creating pasta out of tapioca. She underwent coaching and, at the top of it, took a technology transfer to begin making jack fruit pasta in her unit in Nooranad six years ago.

Within the unit, Rajasree produces flour {and the|and therefore the|and conjointly the} preserve from dehydrated jack fruit. The remainder of the merchandise is created to order from her target Thiruvananthapuram. Except for jack fruit, Rajasree also grows rice and ethakka (Kerala banana) on the family land.

The four hundred products of jack fruit embrace daghashamini (a medicinal powder) from the thorns; kanmashi (kohl) from the gum; payasam, avalose podi from the seeds; preserve from the fruit; cakes and chocolate from the fine-grained seeds; so a lot of more. Packed in steamed banana leaves are native rice, jack fruit aviyal, jack fruit mezhukkupuratti (dry curry), and conjointly fish if requested,” she says.


All merchandise, whether the Navara grain created into organic rice powder, the bananas or jack fruit varieties, the burger patties, the alimentary paste are all made with no of preservatives,” she elaborates. Rajasree sells her products within the native markets, and Fruit N Root made its foray online with mydukaan.com. Because the production is drawn-out and time-consuming, and despite a government subsidy, Rajasree admits that profits aren't as high as united hopes.

“The jack fruit season is till July-August, then we've rice harvests, then return the bananas {and the|and therefore the|and conjointly the} tapioca–we are busy throughout the year. Once Rajasree won a state award for her jack fruit process venture, there are inquiries, however not a lot has been translated into sales.

Rajasree learned to dehydrate the technology of jack fruit at KVK, Kayamkulam.) 

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