The University of Birmingham has agreed to collaborate with the International Solar Alliance (ISA) to help farmers in ‘sun-rich’ countries, such as India, Egypt and Brazil, to take advantage of the chilled food distribution systems powered by solar and solar-hybrid solutions.

The UK university, which is ISA’s research partner on its Solar Cooling Initiative (I-SCI), will focus on promoting the usage of solar and solar-hybrid energy linked cold-chains and cooling systems for agricultural purposes.

I-SCI will enable joint research in solar and solar-hybrid cooling, as well as cold-chain solutions, solar energy storage and energy-efficient solar appliances.

ISA director general Upendra Tripathy said: “This initiative aims to enable millions of farmers by way of integrating cold-chains that work on solar fully or partially. The focus would be on farm-to-fork supply chains, reducing wastage and increasing farmers’ income, leading to economic wellbeing.

“This project will align with the ISA’s first programme, ‘Scaling Solar for Applications in the Agricultural Use’. It is noteworthy that 28 countries have joined this programme to install 270,000 solar water pumps, for which ISA has launched a global aggregation and price discovery tender.”

Agricultural economic growth in ‘sun-rich’ countries is dependant on the connectivity of farmers with markets. Cold chains play a key role in maintaining the quality of perishable produce during the transit from farm to market.

Well-established cold-chain connectivity is expected to reduce food wastage by 40% during transportation.

Cooling systems that use solar-powered technologies are expected to further enhance energy efficiency and reduce environmental impacts.

For this ISA initiative, India’s National Centre for Cold-chain Development (NCCD) will serve as the knowledge partner.

The University of Birmingham and NCCD will focus on exploring new solutions to promote ISA’s initiative to research, plan and deliver technologies in its member countries located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn.

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