The Indian subcontinent, also called ‘South Asia’, includes Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Soya beans probably entered this region at a relatively recent date, after 1,000 AD. The soya beans grown at the foothills in the northern half of the subcontinent are black-seeded and procumbent. These beans probably came from central China either via the Silk Route running across the top of the Tibetan Plateau then down into northern India from the northwest or, more directly, through the northeast tip of India (Assam) and Burma, then into Manipur and the Naga Hills, east of today’s Bangladesh. The soya beans grown in central India were introduced from Japan, south China and southeast Asia, and have distinctly different germplasm from those grown in the north.

The history of soya in India
The earliest known reference to soya beans in this region dates back to 1726, when the botanist Paul Hermann described and illustrated soya beans grown in Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) in his Musaeum Zeylanicum. These soya beans, which were grown on a very small scale then, may have been introduced during the 1600s at the time of the Dutch occupation, when cultural practices were introduced from the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia).



At least in north India and Nepal, soya beans have apparently been used as food for centuries. The earliest efforts to popularise their use were made during the 1930s in India by Mahatma (Mohandas) Gandhi and by a Britisher Kale, who was working with the Maharaja of Baroda. Extensive nutritional studies, which began in India in the late 1930s, have continued until the present.

Commercial soya bean production in this region began to grow in the late 1960s with India leading the way, followed by Nepal. After 1972, India’s soya beans production began to skyrocket. Starting in the late 1970s, extremely original, creative work with soya foods, perhaps the most creative in developing world, began in Sri Lanka. From this time onwards, India and Nepal also showed increased interest in soya foods.

Ideal for consumption in India
The very large vegetarian population of this region promises a bright future for soyfoods. Over 3,000 years ago, Hindus evolved a dietary system which forbade Brahmins (the priest and scholar caste) and the business classes, both of which led a sedentary life, from eating meat and, in many cases, eggs. They developed a largely lactovegetarian diet, containing milk and milk products. Moreover Jainism, which originated in the sixth century BC, teaches the practice of ahimsa or ‘non-hurting and non-killing.’ More than 2 million Jains, who live mostly in northwest India, generally do not eat flesh foods. Today in India, an estimated 65–70 percent of the 600 million people do not eat meat or poultry, and an estimated 50 percent do not eat any flesh foods
(meat, poultry or fish). Brahmins, who constitute 8–10 percent of the population, generally do not eat meat, although due to Western influence, many people may partake of meat when dining out.

To many, however, the thought of eating meat is repugnant. In addition, most non-vegetarians practice vegetarianism 9–10 months a year out of necessity. Some also practice it at certain periods of their life or at certain times of the year. Therefore, while 50 percent of all Indians might eat eggs, meat, poultry, or fish if they could afford them, perhaps only 20 percent eat these animal products regularly. Thus, in the 1970s, only 12 percent of the protein in the Indian diet came from animal products; the rest was supplied by plants.



Likewise in Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Sikkim, largely Buddhist countries, and in Nepal, comprising both Hindus and Buddhists, a majority of the population eats little or no meat. In all these areas, where protein is expensive and in short supply and where meat is an impractical protein source for the great majority of people, soya foods offer great promise as a versatile and tasty source of low-cost, high-quality protein to which there are no ethical objections.

Developments in soya cultivation
Two factors set the stage for potential interest in soya beans in India in the 1960s. First, in 1965, the new ‘Green Revolution’ variety of high-response Mexican dwarf wheat was introduced in India. Wheat acreage expanded dramatically and greatly improved India’s capacity to meet the people’s needs for food calories. This clearly demonstrated how improved seeds combined with an internationally-funded agricultural and extension programmes could quickly and substantially improve the output of a food crop. Second, awareness of India’s ‘protein gap’ was increasing. Dr HAB Parpia, Director of CFTRI in Mysore, estimated that 80 percent of India’s young children suffered from various degrees of protein malnutrition. Moreover, as high-yielding wheat acreage expanded, often taking the place of less profitable pulses, both Indian nutritionists and USAID personnel became concerned about protein deficiencies that might result. So interest turned to the soya bean plant as a plant that might allow farmers to compete with the high-yielding varieties of wheat, and later rice. At the same time, they recommended the introduction of soy-fortified foods such as Bal-Amul and Bal-Ahar for children.

During the late 1960s, it was also found that the soya beans fit very nicely into India’s climate and cropping patterns. The average 76–127 cm (30–50 inches) a year of rainfall, found in most of north and central India, was close to ideal for growing soya beans without irrigation. The early maturing soya beans, planted in June, were ideally suited for a two-crops-a-year rotation with wheat.

Most traditional rainy season (kharif) crops did not mature in time for the land to be prepared for sowing wheat, causing millions of acres of land to lie fallow during the season of most ample rainfall. Thus, soya beans could be grown without replacing other crops. Moreover, the soya beans yielded 4–8 times as much protein per unit area of land, as common Indian pulses, as well as large quantities of vegetable oil.

Encouraged by these extremely promising findings, in 1967, the All-India Coordinated Research Project on Soybean was started as a team effort to develop the soya bean as a new protein food source. The project, with headquarters at Pantnagar, was a joint venture between the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the two Illinois-assisted universities (GB Pant and JNU), USAID and the University of Illinois with help from the Indian Ministry of Agriculture.

In the following years, agriculture departments in the Indian states, many additional universities and various other organisations entered this cooperative programme. Through the coordinated efforts of plant breeders, agronomists, botanists, pathologists, entomologists, rhizobium microbiologists and agricultural engineers, yields on test plots were maintained at favorable levels, averaging up to 49.1 bu/a (3,310 kg/ha). Agricultural economists and extension workers cooperated to expand and market the crop, while food technologists, food processors, industrial engineers and home economists worked to introduce soya foods to the Indian diet.

Growing interest in soya products
Various marketing studies of soya foods were carried out by Williams and Rathod (1974), von Oppen (1974) and Rathod (1976). They agreed that the four most promising soya foods for India were soya flour, soya oil, soya milk and extruded/textured soya flour (TVP).

Extruded soya flour
First made in India in 1972 by SPRA, TVP (extruded/textured soya flour) was India’s most popular soya food from the outset, and by 1981, five companies were making an estimated 4,000 tonnes a year. SPRA made about 50 percent of the total, followed by Ganesh Flour Mills in Delhi, Ruchi (owned by General Foods of Indore) and Mysore Snack Foods. All products were marketed (following SPRA’s lead) in roughly the same way and not as a meat extender or substitute, but as a food in its own right, suggested for use in meatless curries, pilau (pilaf), etc. It was generally sold as granules or chunks to de-emphasise its similarity to meat and some brands were advertised as being ‘100-percent vegetarian’. The potential market for this product is generally considered to be huge.



Soya flour
Soya flour (in its defatted form) is the least expensive protein source in India. Even so, the full-fat whole soya flour is probably more desirable nutritionally since it is rich in both calories and protein, both scarce in the diets of low-income Indians. Roughly 300 tons a year of defatted soya flour were used in Bal-Ahar and Bal-Amul by the mid-1970s. Whole soya flour is not yet available because of the difficulties of packaging it at a low cost; packing it in cans puts it out of reach of its key market. There is a potentially immense market for soya flour as a fortifier (at the 10–15 percent level) in wheat-flour chapattis and in breads. Perhaps the largest potential market for the soya bean in India is as a source of oil, especially for vanaspati.

Soymilk
One of India’s early soya foods pioneers was Sasanka S De. He first became involved with soya in 1943 during the Bengal famine, in which 5,000,000 people starved to death. At the time, he worked with Dr BC Guha of Calcutta University in making soymilk to feed hundreds of starving infants. Earlier, soymilk was not widely used in India. The first soy dairy in India was opened by Seventh-day Adventists in 1972 at Spicer Memorial College in Poona, where they made soymilk and related products.

By 1976, the pilot plant connected with the Department of Food Science at GB Pant University was making and selling 600–700 liters of soymilk a day on campus. By 1978, they had made more than a million bottles. By 1979, a related plant, involved in making Sipso brand soya milk, had been started in New Delhi, with a capacity of 50,000 bottles a day. Soymilk is now one of the most common soya products in the Indian market.

Tofu
Since the 1950s and probably much earlier, tofu has been prepared by Chinese communities in India and served at Chinese restaurants. But it was not marketed outside this community. By about 1962–63, many Indian women in urban homes began to make tofu at home. They may have learned the method from the Japanese, as there were no known Indian methods describing the process available during that time. Tofu is very similar to India’s non-fermented cheese, called paneer, and nicely complements pilau, curries, pakoras and a host of sweets. The okara from tofu can be incorporated into chapatis. Because of its close resemblance to paneer, tofu would seem to have a very bright future in India. Its biggest drawback is its short shelf life.

The future
There would seem to be few countries in the world where soya beans and soya foods have a greater market potential than in India. Indeed, they are catching on rapidly. Indian diet, culture and agriculture offer unique challenges, which soya beans and soya foods seem uniquely qualified to meet. While the potential is immense, there are also serious obstacles to realising that potential. The potential seems to lie in three main areas:

•Source of vegetable oil
India is one of the world’s largest consumers of vegetable oils. Domestically grown soya beans could reduce oil imports and save precious foreign exchange, while stimulating local agriculture and the Indian oilseed crushing industry. However, it may be that soya beans can be imported to India less expensively than they can be grown domestically and the Indian land could be used to grow basic food crops.

•Source of protein and employment for
India’s villagers Soya foods are a high-quality, low-cost source of meatless protein, and they can be produced on a village level, in India’s 600,000 villages, providing the much-needed employment to farmers and local craftsmen. Soya foods are fortunate in that they closely resemble very popular, but more expensive, traditional foods: tofu resembles paneer, soymilk resembles milk, soymilk yogurt resembles dahi and soy flour resembles gram flour (from Bengal gram, chickpeas or garbanzo beans). India’s typical spicy seasonings will easily mask subtle differences in flavour. Soya foods could help rectify the unbalanced overemphasis on cereal grains and calorie production and play a vital role in overcoming protein-calorie malnutrition among lower income groups.

•Source of a high-protein meal
There is a fairly large demand for a soybean meal in India’s growing poultry industry, and to a lesser extent in the livestock industry. Yet the vast majority of Indian consumers either cannot afford such products or they are vegetarians. The obstacles seem milder than the potential. Bhatnagar and Ram (1982) feel that the main problems in expanding soya bean production are the limited market and the uncertainty of financial return. There is also the proverbial conservatism of most rural Indians towards dietary changes.

A few specific programmes could be of help in realising the potential of soya in India. First, India is greatly in need of a soya foods training centre and a grassroots soya foods production and utilisation training programme of the type that has been so successful in Sri Lanka. Second, more imagination and innovation needs to be applied to introducing soya foods to both urban consumers and rural villagers. To date, very little imagination has been demonstrated in these vital areas. It is essential to get the people involved, as has been done so successfully in the US and Sri Lanka, by helping them to understand that soya foods represent one practical answer to many of their basic problems.

In India, a major commitment needs to be made by the growing number of people at all levels, which include people in government, food industry, agriculture and education who understand the potential of soya beans and soya foods. If steps are taken to overcome the lack of knowledge and conservative dietary patterns, India could soon be in the forefront of soya beans and soya foods development in developing nations.

The article is an excerpt from the unpublished manuscript History of Soybeans and Soyfoods: 1100 BC to the 1980s by William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi. The authors are the founders of the Soyinfo Center in California (www.soyinfocenter.com)