JOYNAGAR
MOA - ART AND CULTURE
News:
This winter turning out
to be sweet for moa makers
What's
in the news?
● This winter is going to be special for the Joynagar moa, the popular Bengal sweetmeat available only during the colder months of the year, with the number of registered manufacturers witnessing a massive rise and its Geographical Indication tag getting a 10-year extension.
Moa:
●
The moa is a popped-rice ball held together with fresh date-palm jaggery,
extracted from the beginning of December till the end of February.
○
Said to date back to 1904, the moa is made
of aromatic khoi - popped rice -
that is mixed with jaggery, sugar, cashew nuts and raisins.
●
Its manufacture is so synonymous with
Joynagar, a settlement on the outskirts of Kolkata, that it earned the
Geographical Indication tag of Joynagar Moa in 2015.
●
Now, the GI tag has been extended for another ten years.
Issues
in Moa:
●
It has a short shelf life, lasting not more than five days without
refrigeration.
●
The high
perishability has prevented it from being shipped abroad all these decades,
and its export began, on a very small scale, only in 2020.
Recent
development:
●
IIT-Bombay and IIT-Kharagpur developed
packaging material that would dramatically increase the shelf life of the
sweetmeat.