Jorhat — Yesterday’s curse is today a gastronomical delight for the Majulians.
A beetle ( lepidiota mausueta), which was a big menace for inhabitants of the island in Upper Assam as it would not only damage crops but also get into the eyes and cause many bicycle riders to fall, is now making people salivate.
Roasted beetle fry with tomato, plain roasted beetle and beetle curry are the dishes that have gone viral on the Brahmaputra island. The hati puk (elephant insect), as it is locally christened, reportedly tastes like prawns.
“The dishes have become the latest craze among the islanders. People have gone after the hati puk with a vengeance and are having a feast of their lives,” Uma Kanta Kutum of Missamar village said today.
The new gastronomical preference is mainly because of the efforts of scientists from the Assam Agricultural University (AAU) here, who have convinced the residents of the beetle’s high-nutrition quotient.
“Eat it before they eat your crop. That is what we told the villagers so the curse of the beetle could be turned into a blessing,” Badal Bhattacharyya, senior scientist of AAU, told The Telegraph.
Bhattacharyya, who is the principal investigator of the All India Network Project on White Grub (larva of the beetle) and other soil arthropods and was doing extensive research on the insect in Majuli, said it was found the beetle was rich in protein and carbohydrates. There is no toxic content and the insect could be nutritional food for humans and poultry, he said.
The team carried out a campaign to make the people make meat of the insect. “We prepared a few innovative dishes like roasted beetle with tomato in association with the home science department of AAU. These dishes have become quite popular among the islanders,” he said.
The AAU’s research on the beetle in Majuli has already received six awards from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
The insect was first detected in Majuli in 2005 and subsequent research conducted by AAU scientists revealed it had appeared as a severe pest damaging nearly 50 per cent of potato, sugarcane, colocasia and green gram cultivation. “The insect is found in such large numbers only in Majuli, probably because of the soil content and availability of water,” Bhattacharyya said.
He said the insect takes shelter in deeper layers of the soil where insecticides cannot reach and such attempts have thus not borne fruit.
He said it is not the beetle but its immature grub which has been causing the damage. The fat white grub, the size of a human finger, lives in the soil for nearly two years before reaching maturity, all the while gnawing at the roots of crop and causing widespread damage.
The adult scarab beetle does not feed on any plant in the field and hence this species has got the unique distinction of being the first recorded Indian phytophagous scarab beetle with non-feeding adult.
Himangshu Mishra, an assistant of Bhattacharyya, said the insect started coming over ground from the first week of April and already more than one lakh beetle were used to prepare various dishes by the villagers. “We had participated in a community feast where these special dishes were prepared in a remote village. The insect tastes just like prawn,” he said.
“The beetle comes over ground in the evenings only in April-May to mate and as such it is very difficult to check its population growth,” Bhattacharyya said.
Majuli is no longer complaining, though.
(This appeared in The Telegraph on May 12, 2015)