A total of 33 house wives of the armed-force called ‘Thrimsung Aumtshu Tshogpa’ of Mongar Dzongkhag were trained on post-processing on 20th November, 2017. They were given the hands-on training and demonstration for making cookies and doughnuts from the locally available materials like maize, tapioca and pumpkin.
The training was facilitated by the Agriculture Research and Development Center (ARDC, Wengkhar) with the technical assistance from Integrated Fruit Processing Plant (IFPP) and the National Post-harvest center (NPHC) with the fund support from CARLEP.
CARLEP supported this training program as a part of properly channelizing the value chain development, where, this women group will buy the raw materials for the product development from the farmers and do the value-addition. The initiative is expected to benefit the farmers in reducing the post-harvest losses and promoting the product diversification in the markets.
Moreover, the vegetables like pumpkin which apparently is not a dominant cash crop is the main raw materials for the products. Therefore, the training on cookies making will add the value to the easily available pumpkins.
Meanwhile, as a part of post-training activities, the women participants have started making various cookies at home, and, they are targeting to market their products in the upcoming Tshechu in the Dzongkhag.

-Reported by Karma Wangmo with the information and the picture from the facebookpage of ARDC.