Historical Background

The Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) was established in December, 1961 under the aegis of Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Ministry of Defence, Government of India, at Mysore especially to cater to the strategic operational requirements of our Services and to provide logistical support in the area of Food supplies and varied food challenges of Indian Army, Navy, Air force and other paramilitary forces.

Our troops often operate in far-flung inhospitable treacherous terrains under inclement and hostile weather conditions. In such operational situations, not only are they deprived of the fresh produce needed to sustain life processes, even normal regime of cooking becomes extremely cumbersome and difficult. The R & D efforts at DFRL are aimed at designing and engineering lightweight, convenience pack rations for Army, Navy, Air Force and other paramilitary forces. Which do not require any elaborate cooking or preparation at the consumer’s end and remain shelf-stable under varying climatic conditions for periods ranging from 6 months to 1 year. This is the only Laboratory, which is exclusively engaged in Research and Development in the field of Food Science and Technology for Defence Forces. Prior to the inception of DFRL, the laboratory functioned as a Food Group within the precincts of Defence Science Laboratory, Delhi.

Through enormous and substantive contributions, DFRL has developed a wide variety of food products of Indian dietary matching the mainframe palate tastes of the country. Many of the DFRL foods, born out of innovative state-of-the-art technologies, lend themselves eminently suitable to industrial scale commercial exploitation by enterprising entrepreneurs of different genre. DFRL also has products which are export worthy and amenable to working women owing to its singular dedicated contributions in processed foods.

DFRL, through the dedicated efforts of its scientists and technologists, over the last five decades, has been able to conserve, preserve, stabilize, design, fabricate and engineer a vast array of food products of Indian dietary which are not only shelf stable under all weather conditions but also deliver adequate nutrition and energy to keep the morale of our Service personnel high at all times.

DFRL can be reckoned as the leader in convenience foods and packed ration developments in this country. Indigenous ingenuity is the hallmark of most of the technologies developed at DFRL.