PUNE: Students conducted the second edition of SAE India’s TIFAN 2019 at MIT, Pune on October 30. Technology Innovation Forum for Agricultural Nurturing (TIFAN) aims at providing a platform for agricultural product innovation by generating a talent pool for off-highway industry, for engineering and agricultural engineering sectors. 

The competition provided undergraduate students hands-on experience on agricultural/off-highway machinery.

The challenge for TIFAN 2019 is ‘Self Propelled Onion Harvester’. The evaluation criteria are innovation, productivity, efficiency, fuel economy, cost and ease of operation.

TIFAN is organised annually with a new challenging theme every three years. The problem statement/ challenge is related to farm operations. The competition is held in two stages, qualifying round and field competition. 

Students from 37 colleges from seven states across India participated in the qualifying round. Most of the teams came up with new innovative designs for self-propelled onion harvester. 

The shortlisted colleges will reach the final round where they have to demonstrate the physically built machines in the field. The final will be held at Mahatma Phule Krishi Vidyapeeth (MPKV), Rahuri in March 2019.

Indra Mani, President of Indian Society of Agricultural Engineering and Head of Agricultural Engineering of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi was the chief guest. The other dignitaries included Sandeep Mahajan, General Manager of John Deere India and Convener of TIFAN 2019, Sanjay Nibandhe, Chairman of SAE India Western Section, Nilkanth Devshetwar, Head of Competency, Technology and Labs of John Deere India, Prakash Joshi, Founder and Joint Managing Trustee of MAEER’s MIT. 

The experts at the event spoke about the role of engineering colleges in contributing towards the real-life challenges of agriculture sector.