Dr. Tarsem Chand Mittal is B.Tech. (Agricultural Engineering) and Ph.D from PAU Ludhiana while he did his M.Tech (Post Harvest Engineering) from IIT, Kharagpur. He joined PAU in July 1995 as Assistant Extension Engineer. Since joining PAU, he has been actively involved in research and teaching activities although his main emphasis was in extension activities related to processing and value addition of farm produce, especially the durable crops. He has been instrumental in providing technical guidance to the farmers/ small entrepreneurs for setting up of agro processing complexes (APCs), turmeric processing setups and other units related to value addition of farm produce. Till now he has coordinated more than 150 training courses in the areas of agro processing, storage of produce and entrepreneurship development in value addition. The technologies such as forced air convective recirculatory solar dryer, hybrid solar dryer, turmeric processing machinery developed by him, have received university recognition and stakeholders’ adaptation. He has guided 3 Ph.D and about 15 M.Tech students in their research work. He has to his credit about 40 research publications out of which some are in journals of high repute. He has also published about 50 popular articles for the benefit of farmers. He has brought funds from agencies such as UGC, NABARD, ICAR and other state and central agencies through various adhoc projects. For the PMFME scheme of Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Govt. of India, He is Master Trainer in the area of Grain Processing.

Research Projects:

• Revolving Fund Scheme entitled “Processing and sale of agricultural produce” (Scheme Incharge)
• Establishment of agro processing centre, training and demonstration of technologies
• Development of technology for production, farm level processing and packaging of millets and its value-added products (PI)
• Establishment of agro processing complexes
• Primary processing of food grains

Research Publications :

1. Tiwari R K, Mittal T C, Singh S, Sharma S R and Rani S (2022). Design and development of solar hybrid distillation system for essential oil extraction from turmeric J Food Process Preserv, 00,e17066. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpp.17066
2. Tiwari R K, Mittal T C, Sharma S R and Rani S (2022). Effect of the distillation methods on the chemical properties of the Turmeric essential oil. Paper accepted in Journal of Food Processing and Preservation.
3. Gill R S, Singh S, Hans V S, & Mittal T C (2021). Turmeric (Curcuma longa) drying in natural circulation solar dryer: An experimental evaluation. J Food Process Preserv, e13765. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfpe.13765
4. Singh S, Gill R S, Hans V and Mittal T C (2022) Experimental performance and economic viability of evacuated tube solar collector assisted greenhouse dryer for sustainable development. Energy 241 (2022) 122794. https://doi.org/10.1016 /j.energy.2021.122794
5. Chavan P, Sharma P, Sharma S R, Mittal T C and Jaiswal A K 2022. Application of high‐Intensity ultrasound to improve food processing efficiency: A Review. Foods. https://doi.org/10.3390/ foods11010122.

Awards and Recognition:

1. A Forced circulation solar dryer was approved in the 243^rd meeting of REC and a MOU was signed with M/S Vishawkarma Engineering for its commercial production.
2. Solar curing system for kharif onion’ approved in 276^th meeting of REC on 21-01-2020 vide Endst. No. PBG/2020/2800-2870 dated 12-2-2020.
3. Conferred with “JAE (Journal of Agricultural Engineering) best paper award” by ISAE for the paper “Effect of natural ageing of basmati paddy on physic-chemical and textural properties of cooked rice” for the year 2011.
4. Master Trainer in Grain Processing in the PMFME scheme by completing training on grain processing organized by CFTRI Mysore during 2020.