Upgradation of jaggery production and preservation technologies

Jaggery is a traditional concentrated product of sugarcane juice which is easily and cheaply available to the Indian rural population. Several value added jaggery based products are also very popular in large section of population throughout the country. Jaggery is a good source of minerals and nutritiants and also has various medicinal values. With the increasing demand of this nutritive sweetener, efforts are being made to develop a standard manufacturing package that will increase its productivity besides quality improvement in terms of hygiene, standardization of shape, size, and storability. The thermal and overall efficiencies of jaggery making plants are very low due to loss of thermal energy through flue gasses and un-designed constructional parameters of plant. The storage of jaggery is also a major problem. Since, it is much influenced by the contents of invert sugars and mineral salts that are hygroscopic in nature. This intends us to study the technological upgradations used for the production and preservation of jaggery in order to prioritise the required advancements. This paper gives an overview of the technological upgradation of jaggery manufacturing plants and the preservation of jaggery by using different storage and packaging methods.