National Mission on Dehydrators
India loses ₹1 lakh crore of agricultural produce to post-harvest waste every year — a problem with a known, deployable solution. Heat pump dehydrators are 3× more efficient than solar alternatives, operate 24/7 regardless of weather, and deliver the precision temperature control needed for export-quality produce. CRID is building the national case for dehydrator adoption — and is already running its first pilot in Ladakh.
The Problem
The gap CRID is closing.
One-third of India's agricultural produce is lost to post-harvest waste — a ₹1 lakh crore annual loss that falls hardest on farmers at the bottom of the chain. Existing solar dryers cannot solve this: they are weather-dependent, cannot deliver uniform temperature control, and produce inconsistent quality that fails export standards. A proven technological solution — efficient, reliable heat pump drying — remains undeployed at scale because no one has built the policy, financial, and market infrastructure to deploy it.
CRID's Approach
How we're building this.
CRID's dehydrator programme moves from advocacy to deployment. The first phase builds the policy case — engaging BEE and EESL to establish standards and endorsement frameworks for heat pump dehydrators. Simultaneously, CRID is executing a 1-tonne-per-day pilot in Ladakh for apricot drying, in partnership with SELCO, to generate real-world proof of performance. The next phase scales to multi-state pilots across 8 strategic states, using the Ladakh pilot data to design a BEE-endorsed national deployment programme.
Expected Impact
What changes when this lands.
At scale, India's dehydrator mission would recover a meaningful portion of the ₹1 lakh crore in annual post-harvest losses, increase farmer income through access to export-quality markets, and cut approximately 1% of India's total emissions. The Ladakh pilot is already demonstrating that the technology works — what follows is the architecture to scale it.
Next Program
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