Holi, the festival of colours is celebrated at the onset of spring and characterized by use of coloured powders and water-filled balloons. Like every year, this year too, the celebration of Holi took place at Adamas University on March 6, 2020. Students, teaching and non-teaching staff from all Schools of Adamas University join together and celebrated the festival with a cultural programme. Use of chemical colours have certain drawbacks; as for example, when applied on skin they can cause hair loss, breathing problems, irritation and watering of eyes. Besides such chemicals are also difficult to decompose easily as they are complex polymers and damages environment. Particularly, some metallic colours with glistening silver, black or white appearance are extremely toxic as they may contain chemicals such as lead oxide, copper sulphate, aluminium bromide and mercury sulphite. In order to develop a safe and environment friendly Holi colour, students from the School of Life Science and Biotechnology and the Adamas Biotechnology Club developed Herbal Abir or organic colours. Two students, Subhadip Saha and Sanchita Baisya, under supervision of Dr. Arpita Das from the Department of Biotechnology collected abundant fresh flowers (Bauhinia purpurae) from the eco-friendly Adamas University campus and processed them under different conditions to obtain organic powder with fresh floral fragrance. They also used turmeric (Curcuma longa) for creating Herbal Abir. These naturally produced colour powders are not only safe for hair, skin and eyes but they are also easy to remove from clothes and are environment friendly as they are bio degradable. Apart from being safe and environment friendly, Herbal Abir also have the distinction of being an in-house product of Adamas University as constituents of Herbal Abir can be obtained from Adamas University campus itself.
School of Life Science and Biotechnology
Adamas University
