UNAIR NEWS – Pare (bitter melon) is one of the tropical fruits. Although it tastes bitter, bitter melon contains many benefits. Not only as a source of food, bitter melon can also be used as medicine.
Bitter taste substances in bitter melon called charantin have various benefits, including controlling blood sugar and preventing heart disease and cholesterol. It is the basis of scientific research conducted by three students of Faculty of Advanced Technology and Multidiscipline Universitas Airlangga (FTMM UNAIR) in the 2022 Agritech Research and Entrepreneurship Innovation (AGREETION), an international scientific competition.
2022 AGREETION is a series of international poster and scientific works competitions organized by Agritech Research and Study Club (ARSC) Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Universitas Brawijaya. The competition themed “Accelerating the Innovation of Agro-Industry Technology and Business” is an event for students worldwide interested in agricultural technology and related sciences to train and improve their creativity to produce innovative solutions.
Three FTMM UNAIR students, M. Aditya Bryan Rahadi, Moch. Falah Putra Hani, and Yeremia B. Christian managed to win a gold medal in the 2022 AGREETION thanks to a scientific poster that carried out research on charantin in bitter melon. To UNAIR NEWS, April 16, 2022, Aditya as the team leader, explained that they decided to raise this research topic after various considerations, including suggestions from the supervisory lecturer.
“Finally, it was decided to make a poster about the bitter taste that can be encapsulated and have the advantage of retaining these substances that have very good benefits for the body. Choose bitter melon for the main ingredients,” said Aditya.
Aditya also said that the choice of bitter melon as the topic of their scientific poster research was motivated by the charantin substance has a bitter taste so it is not used very often as food products. However, he continued, charantin is easily degraded, and its efficiency for absorption in the body tends to be low.
The scientific poster in the sub-theme category of Food Safety and Health, Aditya added, requires much preparation. “The preparation starts from conducting literature studies from journals or books, compiling the poster’s contents and the data that needs to be included and thinking about the poster design. All the processes carried out until the poster finished in two weeks,” said the student majoring in Nanotechnology Engineering.
Aditya also talked about his team’s difficulties and experiences while participating in the competition. According to him, the main difficulty of 2022 AGREETION competition is finding interesting and needed initial ideas in the agricultural industry.
“This is a new experience because this poster competition is our first poster competition. We hope we will be more enthusiastic to take part in national and international competitions in the future,” he said.
In the end, Aditya revealed that in making scientific posters, not only the poster design must be made as attractive as possible, but the readers must easily understand the content of the poster. (*)
Author: Dewi Yugi Arti
Editor: Nuri Hermawan
