Departments

Infrastructure and Laboratory Facilities Available IRTC has a campus of about 3.54 ha. and 4620m2 of built- up area including: Office block, Civil Engineering block, Chemical & Environmental laboratory, Microbiology laboratory,Electrical and Electronics Lab, Workshop and Fabrication centre, Soap production centre (Samatha Production centre), Mushroom production centre, Plant nursery, Rabbit rearing unit, Pig rearing unit, Pottery centre Aquaculture lab and ponds, Mess hall & Kitchen, Library & Auditorium Accommodation facility (staff quarters to accommodate 25-30 persons, a dormitory to accommodate   84 persons, ladies quarters to accommodate 20 persons) 3 numbers of roof-water harvesting tanks (total capacity of 1.65 lakhs litres). Functional Departments >Rural Engineerig Centre >Energy and Rural Technology >Solid Waste Management >Small Hydro Projects >Fisherries >Rabbit Rearing >Mushroom Cultivation >Parishad Production Center >Pottery And Decoupage >Watershed Management >Civil Division >GIS-map digitalization > Environmental Science     Click on each department OR Read more about each departments below

Rural Engineering Centre (REC)
The mechanical fabrication workshop of IRTC is called Rural Engineering Centre (REC). Started with basic fabrication facilities, the REC was expanded and modernised with a number of machineries and facilities with a project support from KSCSTE. This centre now acts as a support facility centre to Rural Inventors to carry out development/fabrication activities of their innovative ideas. IRTC also make use of these facilities for various mechanical fabrication works related to the project/ product development/technology development activities. Apart from this, the REC caters to the in-house fabrication requirements. View Photos >>

Energy and Rural Technology Division
Energy is one of the major areas of our involvement, from the inception itself. This division spearheads various activities in field of energy conservation, non-conventional energy sources, etc. The major activities are development of biomass based cooking systems, biomass gasifier based rural energy systems, energy conservation campaigns, etc. There is an Electrical and Electronics lab which undertakes development of energy efficient devises and various studies related with energy conservation, power line mapping, etc.
    The activities in the are of Rural Technology is mainly focusing on development of various devices useful for rural application for drudgery reduction and improving efficiency. This division also caters as a support centre/ resource centre for Rural Inventors for carrying out their innovative project ideas. View Photos >>

Solid Waste Management Division
Solid waste management has become a huge problem in the rapidly urbanising society and multi prong approach is required to address this problem. This division is involved in developing various technologies/technology packages for house hold waste management as well as at community level. This division is providing technical support to various LSGIs in Kerala for implementing SWM units / projects in their localities. It is also promoting waste management at domestic level through composting/vermi-composting and offering technology packages for the same. It is also developing and popularising bio-gas plants as an effective solution for kitchen waste management

Small Hydro Projects Division
IRTC has been proposing small hydro projects, making use of abundant waterfalls in the Western Ghats, as a most suitable solution for meeting the ever increasing energy crisis in Kerala. This division, with an independent sub-centre at Ernamkulam, is involved in feasibility studies and implementation of small hydro projects. Presently there are two project under implementation, one at Meenvallom and another at Palakkuzhy, both in Palakkad District.

Aqua-Culture Division
IRTC is promoting fresh water fish cultivation and ornamental cultivation as income generating activities. With support from Dept. of Science & Technology, GoI, IRTC has establish a well equiped aqua culture division with breading and rearing facilities. This unit is involved in developing and popularising technologies for fish cultivation and ornamental fish cultivation. The unit is providing training and technical support to the aqua-culture farmers and also providing seedlings at nominal rate. Azolla cultivation is also being popularised as a low-cost nutrient-rich cattle feed.View Photos >>

Rabbit Rearing Unit
Rabbit rearing is being popularised as an income generating activity, especially for women. IRTC has established a modern rabbit rearing unit with meat processing and fur processing laboratories. This unit has developed technology packages for rabbit rearing and fur-on tanning for value added products. This unit provides training and technical support to rabbit rearing farmers and helps them through supplying rabbits. It is also developing and promoting technologies for fur-on tanning and value addition. View Photos >>

Mushroom Cultivation
With the favourable climatic conditions, oyster mushroom cultivation is indeed a promising income generating activity, especially for the women. IRTC has established a mushroom cultivation unit with all required lab facilities and providing training and technical support to farmers in oyster mushroom cultivation. This unit is also involved in production and supply of mushroom spawn and maintains a mushroom cultivation unit which can produce ....... kg of mushroom daily. View Photos >>

Pottery Division
Pottery is one of the oldest technical trade in the history of human being and nothing has changed in this trade, as far as the production technology has concerned. The Palakkad district has the highest number of potter colonies in the state and the socio-economic condition of the section of the society is very poor. Almost all of them are producing traditional earthen ware/pot which has very low demand in the present society. To improve the socio-economic conditions of this community, IRTC has taken up a number of activities including training the potters in modern motorised potter wheels, development and popularisation of new value addition techniques like Decoupage and Studio Pottery, providing technical as well as managerial support to the potters, etc. IRTC is also helping the community in claiming benefits of various schemes and support programmes of the Governments through acting as a service/support centre. It is the pottery division of IRTC which coordinates all these activities.View Photos of decoupage>> | view photos of pottery>>

Land and Water Management Division.
The importance of watershed based planning has gained wide acceptance. The Rural Development Department and other agencies supporting Rural Development are insisting on development programmes based on watershed. Govt: of Kerala has issued instructions to local bodies to frame their annual plans in agriculture and allied sectors on watershed basis. It was under these circumstances that IRTC entered into the arena of watershed based plan preparation to help the local bodies. Our past experience as a training centre on watershed development under the Peoples Plan Campaign and our vision of participatory development gave us enough confidence. Presently this division is giving technical support to a number of LSGIs in the preparation of watershed based master plan and implementation of various watershed development programmes/projects.

Soap and Toiletries Division
Being a consumerist society, we depend heavily on multinationals for our toiletry consumables. Most of them were made using our own agriculture product, the coconut oil. But our coconut farmers do not get a fair price for their product and the solution for this is value addition of coconut oil by ourself and sell it for internal consumption. This will not only fetch a fair price for coconut but also will create job opportunity, locally. With this intention IRTC has developed technologies for small scale hand made toilet soap making. IRTC also developed technologies for small scale detergent making, washing soap making, and production of other toiletry items. IRTC is propagating these activities as an income generating activity for rural people, especially for women and providing training and technology support to rural folks. It is the Soaps and Toiletries division, which take of these activities. Apart from promotional activities the division is also engaged in R&D work for new products.View Photos >>

Civil Engineering Division
This unit is engaged in planning, implementation and supervision of various civil construction activities of IRTC and its campus as well as at various project sites.View Photos >>

GIS Division
IRTC has recently set a separate division for Geographical Information System (GIS) to cater to the needs of various LSGIs in porting the geo-spatial data in to GIS platform for easy retrieval and updating of data. The GIS lab uses only free/open source software for this purpose. View Photos >>

Parishad Production Centre (PPC)
This is an off-shoot of IRTC and acts as the Marketing wing. This is an independent organisation which is involved in production and marketing of various products developed by IRTC. The major products are Toilet soaps, detergent, liquid blue, other cosmetics, kits for soap making, Hotbox, etc. View Photos >>