One of the first tasks cut out for distinguished woman scientist Shashi Bala Singh, when she was appointed director of the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research, Leh, in 2007, was to try and step up fresh food production for the 80,000 jawans stationed in Ladakh.

A physiologist by training at AIIMS, she and her team, along with agricultural scientists from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, have helped the local Ladakhi population grow up to 74 types of vegetables, including peas, bitter gourd and cucumber during the summer months. During the winter months, new technologies (including the isolation of the cold-tolerant gene) have allowed them to grow greens, including maithi and palak.
“These are being grown in green houses made out of unbaked brick using trench technology. The trenches are covered with white translucent sheets during the day to capture sunlight while in the evenings they are covered with black polythene sheets to arrest the radiation loss. This technology has been successfully used by the local population so much so that the Army is saving `56 crore annually by purchasing these local veggies,” explains Ms Singh.
Fruit production has also received a boost and varieties of peach, plum, strawberry, grapes and apples that are cold resistant and use less water have also been developed.
Already, the local production has gone up substantially and it is estimated that 4500 metric tones of vegetables are now being grown locally, allowing jawans to eat fresh vegetables unlike in the past when veggies would take more than three days to reach Ladakh when transported by trucks or be flown into this arid desert in IL-76 aircraft from Chandigarh during the winter months.
Another important revenue earner developed was to use the locally grown sea buck thorn. “As late as 2001, the local people thought it was a weed and wanted to get rid of it. We decided to use it to make a fresh juice, packed at the Godrej facility in Bhopal, and to also produce sea buck thorn tea and use its pulp to make an anti-oxidant herbal supplement. We have also found that it helps remove bad cholesterol and increase good cholesterol,” she added.
The lab also brought out a customised yoga package which jawans can do during winter when the paucity of oxygen and freezing temperatures prevents them from stepping outside. Aloe vera is being used to treat frost bite and the Army has purchase one crore rupees worth of this cream. Ms Singh is currently the only woman director presently heading the Defence Institute of Physiology & Allied Science, one of DRDO’s 52 labs which is working in reducing the acclimatisation period for jawans from six to three days. “Our focus is to ensure jawans can acclimatise as soon as possible to their harsh surroundings in temperatures which can go up to 40 degrees C in a tank and as low as -60ºC in Siachen. The trick is to see how they can adjust at the earliest and our effort is to reduce their acclimatisation period by half,” she said.
“The mandate of my lab is to optimise the performance of our troops living under extreme environmental conditions,” she explained.
Ms Singh observes that the focus of the DRDO research has been on the western Himalayas. “We now need to now extend our programme to the northeast including Arunachal Pradesh which also faces severe winter. We are going to be holding a workshop there shortly so that a similar programme can be extended to that part of the country,” she adds. Ms Singh is a fellow of the Indian Association of Biomedical Scientist and Indian Academy of Neurosciences.
In 2007, she received the prestigious DRDO Technology Spin Off Award.