The Naga Chilli: Spicing up DRDO research
Defence Research Laboratory, Tezpur: The DRDO’s most unusual lab
The Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) offers intellectual challenges, but not an adventurous image. A DRDO director is perceived as a man in a white coat working in a laboratory or gazing at computer monitors. But the Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) in Tezpur, Assam, tucked away in the northeast, is far removed from these stereotypes. DRL’s Director, Dr RB Srivastava, will spend time next month sitting in the jungle on a machaan, observing how rampaging elephants react to his revolutionary new weapon: the Naga chilli, or bhoot jolokia (meaning Ghost chilli in assamese), which DRL had proclaimed in 2001 as the hottest chilli in the world.This breed holds a Guinees Record as the hottest chilli in the world.
Chilli power is measured in Scofield Heat Units (SHUs); a spicy Indian green chilli logs in at about 100,000 SHUs. Most people, even Indians, would be reduced to tears by eating anything above 200,000 SHUs. The Naga chilli, DRL discovered, measured 855,000 SHUs, far higher than the reigning champion, the 577,000 SHU Californian Red Savina chilli. When the sceptical Chilli Pepper Institute in the USA examined this claim in 2005, they found the DRL had underestimated. The Naga chilli actually measured over a million SHU.
DRL, Tezpur is harnessing all this spice into military applications, such as high-effectiveness tear gas. Meanwhile the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) asked DRL to explore the possibility of using Naga chilli to keep wild elephants away from villages and fields. The DRL’s solution --- a nylon rope coated with Naga chilli placed across paths leading towards human habitation --- will be tested in May and June.
Dr Srivastava laughed as he told Business Standard, “The WWF says I will have to be on the machaan when we test the chilli garland. I told them, God knows how the elephants will behave!”
DRL is also experimenting whether Naga chilli, as a food supplement, might help soldiers in coping with high altitude environments? The laboratory is also working out ideal cultivation practices --- how much water, how much shade, etc --- that will add more zing to this chilli.
What makes DRL Tezpur different from every other DRDO laboratory is its sharp focus on the specific problems of northeast India. And for jawans deployed here, few issues are as important as the provision of clean drinking water in remote posts separated from each other by days of marching across mountains and jungles.
Water in the northeast suffers from a chronically high iron content. In most places it is 10-20 parts per million (ppm), going up to 30-40 ppm in many areas. DRL took on the challenge of bringing this down to the World Health Organisation (WHO) permissible limit of 0.3 ppm.
DRL’s first developed a portable water testing kit, with which soldiers could test water wherever they moved. The kit monitored 11 parameters, including P-h level, hardness, and iron content. Initially it lacked an arsenic detector; that was developed and patented last year. The technology for the water testing kit was transferred to three private companies. It proved highly effective during the floods around Nasik last year.
Next, DRL’s Water Chemistry Division developed the simplest of technologies --- using sand, marbles etc --- to bring down the iron level to 0.3 ppm. The Iron Removal Units (IRUs), which cost just Rs 30,000/- each, purify 300 litres per hour without using electricity. The commercial alternative was ceramic-based filters, costing Rs 3-4 lakhs each, which could only reduce iron to 5 ppm.
Even as the army orders IRUs by the hundred, DRL has just put out an improved Mark II version. Using fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP) technology from the Light Combat Aircraft programme, this weighs just half of the earlier steel IRU. The army has accorded its ultimate accolade, fitting three of these filters in the Tezpur Inspection Bungalow for visiting VIPs. A hundred more are on order.
By 2012, DRL plans to develop a portable filter that jawans can carry in their haversacks. This will bring down iron content to safe levels, as well as arsenic, fluoride and manganese contents, all chronic problems in the northeast.
During the Second World War, Field Marshall William Slim, the commander of the 14th Army in Burma discovered that the anopheles mosquito was causing more casualties to his men than the Japanese. Ruthlessly practical, he decreed that catching malaria was a disciplinary offence, punishable by imprisonment in a military prison. Today’s Indian Army, still serving in the mosquito-ridden jungles of the northeast, continues Slim’s dictat: sleeves must be rolled down after sunset; mosquito nets are compulsory at night.
Now, however, the jawans have a formidable ally: the Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) Tezpur. While other Defence R&D Organisation (DRDO) laboratories focus on weapons and sensors, DRL tackles problems that concern every citizen of the northeast: malaria; the pestilent dim-dam fly; water-purification in remote areas; and power generation from bio-resources.
Such projects are far removed from the glamorous end of defence R&D. But Business Standard learned during a visit to DRL Tezpur that, measured in terms of intellectual property, this is the DRDO’s most successful laboratory. Four months ago DRL’s Molecular Biology Facility became the first Indian institution to file, with the World Gene Bank, the detailed structure of the gene that provides mosquitoes with resistance to insecticides. This gene sequence is now available internationally for research against the mosquito.
And in just the last two years, DRL has filed for eight Indian patents and an international patent for an herbal anti-malarial.
DRL’s success rests on a simple method: tapping into local tribal knowledge of herbs and plants that repel mosquitoes, leeches and other pests and provide relief from their attacks. DRL scientists in Tezpur then use modern laboratory techniques to identify the active ingredient in these local herbs. These ingredients are then packaged into convenient dispensers for soldiers as well as civilians.
DRL’s Director, Dr RB Srivastava, shows us a sheaf of letters from private companies requesting Transfer of Technology (ToT) for his products. During May 09, DRL will hand over technology for the commercial production of five anti-mosquito products, including an herbal anti-malarial that replaces Good Knight; and a bio-larvicide that feeds on mosquito larvae.
DRDO keeps the ToT fee nominal, to encourage as much manufacture as possible. Malaria, points out the DRL Director, can only be tackled at a broad societal level. Only half in jest he says, “Mosquitoes have developed the technology for flying across cantonment walls. We can’t confine ourselves to the military in dealing with issues like malaria.”
But why, I ask, is a defence laboratory researching malaria, an area better left to hospitals, academic research institutions and the Ministry of Health? Dr Srivastava explains that DRL scientists collaborate with the National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR) for technical training and analytical assistance. But there is a marked reluctance within central institutions for working and researching in the difficult border areas of the northeast.
The northeastern state governments turn to DRL as frequently as the military does. DRL is Arunachal Pradesh’s referral institute for water quality studies After DRL’s malarial applications won first prize in a Tripura government science exhibition, shutting out competitors like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the Tripura government has turned to DRL for an anti-malaria programme.
DRL’s bold charter criss-crosses the dividing line between civil and military. A great success is its one-week mushroom farming training programme, run for batches of 25-30 local youths. DRL estimates that each graduate who opens a mushroom farming unit employs about 30 locals, bringing them into the national mainstream and narrowing the extremists’ recruitment base.
again never never ever.
