Technological Impact of Modernized Dal Mills on Pulse Production and Food Security: A Case Study of Redgram in Gulbarga District of Karnataka

The pulse processing sector has immense potential for value addition and employment generation. The increase in processing efficiency will help improve the income of both dal mills and producers. Gulbarga is one of the important pulse producing and processing district in Karnataka. A large number of traditional dal mills including a few modern units process redgram in this area. The recovery percentage (constituting Grade-1, Grade-2 and Grade-3) was worked out to be 85 per cent in modern dal mills compared to 78 per cent in the traditional dal mills. However, the returns from byproducts (chunni + bhusa) contributed 3.51 per cent to the gross returns in modern dal mills and marginally higher (5.42%) in the traditional mills. The study has revealed that adoption of modern technology (use of buller and sortex machines with other basic equipments) in processing of redgram increased dal output by 7 per cent over the traditional dal mills output. This 7 per cent increase in dal output is equivalent to 1,48,420 quintals of redgram production in the Gulbarga district.