Update: Minister Reports 28-Day Refrigerated Shelf Life for Kaladi

What has changed

Udhampur's Kaladi is back in the news because of a reported food-technology development. In coverage published on 25 September, Greater Kashmir reported Union Minister Jitendra Singh's statement that work at CSIR-CFTRI, Mysuru, had extended the cheese's refrigerated shelf life to up to 28 days.

The minister also said private companies had been invited through an Expression of Interest to commercialise standardised Kaladi-cheese technology. These are attributed statements about the intervention, not JammuBeat's independent laboratory findings.

What a prospective applicant still needs

We checked CFTRI's public Expression of Interest page again on 27 September. The retrieved list included buckwheat-starch, seaweed-food and other notices, but no Kaladi-specific notice. That does not prove that no notice exists elsewhere. It means we cannot provide a verified Kaladi application window, deadline, licence fee or eligibility terms from that page.

For a prospective food entrepreneur in Jammu or Udhampur, the practical next step is to obtain the actual technology-transfer notice from CFTRI before making an application or a business commitment. An announced commercialisation proposal is not the same as a verified open application process.

Clarification, 27 September: this article reports a claimed result for a standardised process; it does not establish a storage period for every locally made Kaladi. Earlier categorical claims about market reach and the absence of notices anywhere have been removed.

Sources: Greater Kashmir's report of the minister's statement; CSIR-CFTRI Expression of Interest list.