To enhance national and house-hold food security by way of reducing post harvest food losses through development, adoption, adaptation and transfer of appropriate food processing and storage technologies.

To reduce post-harvest food losses through process and product development.

The objectives of the Technology Development Programme are to:

1.       Develop, adapt and/or adopt and disseminate appropriate food processing technologies.

2.       Minimize post-harvest food losses through promotion of processing and utilization of locally available traditional and horticultural foods to reduce dependency on food importation.

3.       Train micro and small scale enterprises [MSEs] to enable them produce quality and value added food products able to meet local demands and to penetrate the internationally competitive markets.

4.       Create adequate human resources and technological capacity to cope with the demands of a rapidly growing food industry as Kenya moves towards NIC status.

5.       Collaborate with local and international institutions, government ministries, donor community, non-governmental organizations [NGOs] Community based organizations [CBOs] etc in the commercialization of appropriate food processing technologies.

6.       Providing other tailor-made technical services as per customers’ requirements.

In collaboration with the Technology and Engineering Capacity Building and Technology Transfer Programmes based at KIRDI, the Technology Development Programme offers the following services to the food industry:

1.       Promotion of processing and utilization of traditional and horticultural food crops.

2.       Providing consultancy and training services including HACCP training to the food industry [with particular emphasis on micro and small-scale enterprises – MSEs.]

3.       Development, adaptation and/or adoption and dissemination of appropriate food processing technologies.

4.       Product and process development on pilot scale [at KIRDI] including limited production runs for market research and development of innovative products and processes.

5.       Commercialization of technologies for processing traditional and horticultural food crops through setting up of pilot plants.

Technology Transfer Projects

Application of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point on in Processing of Coffee.

Utilization of Rice Straw in Mushroom Production Technology.

Improvement of Processing and Marketing of Orange-Fleshed Potatoes Products in Western Kenya.