Bamboo Shoot (PDF)

Prof. Nirmala Chongtham is presently working in the Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. She has been working in bamboo shoot nutrition since the last 18 years and has guided more than 15 Ph.D. students. Born and brought up in Manipur in the North East region of India, she was introduced to bamboo and bamboo shoots at a very early age. She has surveyed most of the bamboo growing areas in India focusing mainly on the North Eastern states which is the bamboo paradise of India and where bamboo shoots are a part of the traditional cuisine and used regularly in most households as a part of daily diet. Her team is working on various aspects of bamboo shoots starting from nutrient and phytochemical analyses, processing and packaging, food fortification with bamboo shoots and phytomodulatory effects of shoots in some non-communicable diseases using animal models. Food products fortified with bamboo shoots have also been developed by her group. She is closely associated with the World Bamboo Organization, USA and in recognition of her work in bamboo, she was appointed as World Bamboo Ambassador from India in 2015 and as an ambassador, is still continuing her work in promoting bamboo for environment and socioeconomic development. She worked as Chair of the Technical Committee, World Bamboo Congress (WBC) 2015 in Korea, Co-Chair in WBC Mexico, 2018, Co-coordinator of the 3rd World Bamboo Workshop held in Manipur, India in 2019 and is the Chair for the 12th WBC to be held in Taiwan. She is widely travelled being invited to deliver lectures and has visited countries like Germany, Belgium, Thailand, Korea, USA, Mexico, Columbia and Costa Rica. She is a recipient of many project grants from India for research on bamboo such as University Grant Commission, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Biotechnology and Ministry of Food Processing Industries, New Delhi, India for conducting work on Bamboo Shoots. She has more than 100