Japan-India ‘food as medicine’ mission reaches Mangaldai and Amingaon

OUR CORRESPONDENT

MANGALDAI: Two days after the Bilateral Japan-India International Symposium on 'Regional Food Knowledge for Global Health: Food as Medicine' at IIT Guwahati, the dialogue moved from the conference hall to the factory floor.

On Thursday, a high-level delegation led by Prof Utpal Bora, Head of the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati, visited the SRD Group in Mangaldai, a food industry leader in Eastern India. Prof Bora was accompanied by a Japanese delegation led by Prof Hiroko Isoda, Director, ARENA, University of Tsukuba, and Takehiko Hayase, First Secretary (Food & Agriculture), Embassy of Japan in India, along with Japanese industry and academic representatives. Organised by the University of Tsukuba (Japan) / IIT Guwahati (India) / Gifu University, and chaired by Prof Hiroko Isoda and Prof Utpal Bora, the symposium examined the emerging concept of 'Food as Medicine' - integrating global scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom on region-specific foods, nutritional resources, and medicinal plants.

Given the rising non-communicable diseases, ageing populations, and nutritional imbalances, the symposium highlighted how Japan and India-both rich in food cultures and long-standing medicinal traditions-can collaborate on preventive, personalised, and sustainable healthcare.

A key objective was to strengthen Japan-India scientific collaboration under the Campus in Campus (CiC) Network led by the University of Tsukuba, and to lay the groundwork for large-scale future projects, including potential initiatives under the SATREPS framework.

Later in the day, the delegation visited Signova Healthcare Pvt. Ltd. in Amingaon, where they held very fruitful discussions with the Directors.