The 19th World Congress of Food Science & Technology- IUFoST 2018 opened today at Navi Mumbai with the highlighted theme ’25 Billion Meals A Day By 2020- with Healthy, Nutritious, Safe & Diverse FOODS’.
The inaugural ceremony was graced by the presence of V Prakash, Congress Chair, IUFoST 2018; Prof Dr Dietrich Knorr, President, IUFoST; P G Rao, Chairman, Scientific Committee, IUFoST 2018 Congress, Dr RA Mashelkar, FRS, National Research Professor, India; Prof GD Yadav, VC, ICT, Mumbai & National Organising Committee Member; Kishan Lal, Chairman, Chair of Global Network of Science Academy; Jagdish Patankar, Organising Secretary, IUFoST 2018 Congress.
The welcome programme was concluded by a keynote address from Dr RA Mashelkar. He spoke about how assured innovations in the field of food science and technology can become a game changer and move the ideas from mind to a marketplace. “The key drivers for a successful innovation are talent, technology and trust. The young minds in India are coming up with a lot of new ideas that need to be encouraged and implemented. The coming years will see numerous developments taking place in the areas of food safety, food delivery, personalised nutrition, artificial proteins, 3D food printing, food robotics to name a few”.
It was followed by the announcement of the Lifetime Achievement and Young Scientists Excellence Awards 2017. While the former was bestowed upon the University of Massachusetts Amherst food scientist David Julian McClements, Emmanuel Hatzakis, Assistant Professor, Ohio State University, received the Young Scientist award. These awards had been declared at the recent Fi Europe Innovation Awards ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany.
A lot more lies ahead in the coming days since the congress is loaded with nearly 1000 abstracts, 66 scientific sessions well integrated with over 270 invited talks from leading exoerts globally.