A centuries-old dairy tradition from the hills of Udhampur, Jammu and Kashmir, is about to cross borders — and it is science that is opening the gate. Union Science and Technology Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh on Saturday, October 17, 2026, spotlighted how CSIR-CFTRI, Mysuru, has extended the refrigerated shelf life of traditional Kaladi Cheese to 28 days, unlocking a path to national and global markets that local entrepreneurs could only dream of before.

What CSIR-CFTRI did for Kaladi — and why 28 days changes everything

Kaladi — a firm, slightly tangy, hand-stretched cheese beloved in Udhampur and the Jammu belt — has long been a hyperlocal product, its freshness window too narrow for interstate trade, let alone export. The Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR-CFTRI) in Mysuru, one of India's premier food-science laboratories, deployed preservation and packaging technology to stretch that window to 28 days under refrigeration. That single intervention transforms Kaladi from a village-market item into a product that can travel cold chains, sit on organised retail shelves, and meet the minimum durability thresholds that importers demand.

Dr. Singh's post amplified testimonials from the entrepreneur beneficiaries themselves — small producers and processors in Udhampur who are already registering the downstream effect: new orders, formalised units, and a livelihood that no longer depends solely on the weekly local bazaar.

The policy thread: Article 370's rollback and J&K's science-linked economy

This is not an isolated project. Since the 2019 revocation of Article 370, central schemes and scientific institutions have been systematically channelled into Jammu and Kashmir to integrate its economy with national value chains. The PMFME scheme and the broader Atmanirbhar Bharat framework prioritised formalisation and technology upgradation of micro food-processing units — categories into which Kaladi producers fit precisely.

CSIR-CFTRI has run shelf-life extension and food-standardisation programmes for regional products since the early 2000s, with similar work done on GI-tagged foods from the Northeast and Himalayan states. The Kaladi project follows that proven template, applying industrial food science to a cultural product to make it commercially viable without stripping its identity.

From Udhampur dairy sheds to global export corridors

The minister framed the initiative explicitly as building on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of local products finding global audiences — a philosophy that has powered campaigns from Vocal for Local to the push for GI-tag exports. For Udhampur's dairy entrepreneurs, that vocabulary is now translating into tangible infrastructure: technology transfer, cold-chain compatibility, and the credibility that a CSIR imprimatur brings to a buyer abroad.

What remains to accelerate the story is formalised export trials, a potential GI tag registration for Kaladi Cheese, and the replication of CSIR-CFTRI's technology transfer model to other districts of J&K that carry equally rich, equally underexposed food traditions. The blueprint is written. The cheese is packed. The question now is how fast the cold chain catches up.