Dr Ram P Aneja

Dr Ram P Aneja, formerly Managing Director of India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), is now an international dairy consultant. He has motivated a generation of dairy scientists in development of technologies for industrial manufacture of Indian milk products. He set up India's first pilot plant for modernized manufacture of ethnic dairy food at Sugam Dairy in Vadodara, Gujarat, in Western India, in the early eighties. Later, this unit was expanded into a commercial plant for industrial-scale production of these milk delicacies. Subsequently, he established a similar unit in Canada for dairy farmers of New Brunswick.

Dr Aneja holds several patents on the manufacture of ethnic dairy products and intermediates such as chakka, shrikhand and khoa. He contributed a major section on "Indigenous Dairy Products of India and Neighbouring Countries" for the FAO Animal Health and Production Paper No 85 on "The Technology of Traditional Milk Products in Developing Countries", published in 1990.

Dr Aneja is the first Indian to be elected to the Permanent Commission on "Dairy Technology & Engineering" of the International Dairy Federation, Brussels. He is past President of the Indian Dairy Association. He has been a key speaker at national and international seminars, symposia and workshops on ethnic dairy foods.

Dr B N Mathur

Director, National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, Dr Mathur is a distinguished dairy technologist and has served as member of several national and international organizations. As Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Food Science and Technology, University of Nebraska, USA, he has researched on process development for utilization of whey for human foods, cultured dairy products and therapeutic aspects of fermented milks.

Dr Ramesh C Chandan

Dr Ramesh C Chandan is President of Global Technologies Inc, USA, a consulting firm in food science and technology, established in 1994. He was Associate Professor, Michigan State University, Dept of Food Science & Human Nutrition from August 1976 to April 1982. He has over 45 years experience in dairy food manufacturing, product development and technology transfer, specializing in cheese, paneer and fermented milk products. During this period, he held a number of important positions in leading international companies such as General Mills, Land O' Lakes and Unilever in various capacities, including research and development as well as product and process know-how.

His major consulting assignments include serving as FAO/UN Advisor to India's National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) between 1987 and 1994. During this period, he developed and standardized an industrial process for the manufacture of paneer, a soft cottage cheese widely consumed in India. He also worked on a continuous process for making khoa, gulabjamun and peda, the popular ethnic delicacies. He also developed a process for making frozen yogurt/dahi at Sugam Dairy in Vadodara, Gujarat in Western India. He has assisted in a technology transfer in cheese, yogurt and various other dairy products in Poland and Ukraine in Eastern Europe.

Dr Chandan has received numerous national and international awards. His areas of special interest are fermented/cultured dairy products, cheese and paneer as well as the role of milk products in human nutrition. He is author of three books and has contributed chapters to many publications, invited as a key speaker to national and international conferences and seminars.



Asim K Banerjee

Asim K Banerjee, Dairy Consultant, has held a number of eminent positions in his career in Dairy Engineering of 45 years. These included: former Managing Director, Bihar State Dairy Corporation Ltd and Counsellor-cum-Chief (Dairying), Indian Embassy, Brussels, Belgium. As Director (Engineering), NDDB, he was instrumental in planning and designing milk plants and their coordination during the Operation Flood.

During his tenure as a founder faculty member of India's first graduate course in Dairy Technology at NDRI, Karnal, he designed India's first mechanized khoa-making unit that was later adapted for widespread use in the Indian dairy industry. He also designed equipment for making dahi and sterilized flavoured milk, suitable for small-scale production.

At the Sugam Dairy in Vadodara, Gujarat, he was associated in the planning and designing of the dairy plant, selection of equipment, and their layout for commercial production and marketing of ethnic dairy products such as shrikhand, gulabjamun, peda, lassi and dahi. It was the first dairy of its kind in India. For FAO/UN, he prepared a project report on the source of supply of equipment for the manufacture of ethnic dairy foods. It covered the manufacturing processes for traditional milk products, the list of equipment required, their specifications and source of supply. For the International Dairy Federation (IDF), he co-authored a monograph on "Dairying in Developing Countries".