Hegde : India is yet to take up with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) the issue of a Texas company, Ricetec, being given a patent for Basmati rice, the Commerce Minister, Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde,

Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) and provincial governments have finalised the cotton research programme for 1998-99. Since Punjab has the incidence of cotton leaf curl virus, it was decided

Centre has viewed with deep concern the emerging threat to cotton crop by the leaf curl virus. It is determined that the previous year's incidents of farmers committing suicide due to crop failure

The Rajasthan government has decided to implement a project sponsored by the United National Development Programme (UNDP) on large-scale maize cultivation .

The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has started the registration of emerging new varieties and cross-breeds of plants as an advance action for the inevitable patent regime as per the

Productivity on Russian farms remains abysmal-by one measure, a quater of that achieved by Chinese peasants working in identical conditions. Marketing and financial management are scarcely attempted:

The Grameen Bank is reported to be linking up with Monsanto, an aggressive US based bio-technology corporation to test "hybrid cotton" and increase its yield in the northern part of Bangladesh.

US biotech firm Mycogen and Rhone-Poulenc Agro (RPA) of France, the crop protection subsidiary of life sciences company Rhone-Poulenc, are pooling their resources to develop and market

Pakistan's success impresses IAEA : The technique successfully used by the Faisalabad-based Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biotechnology, a subsidiary of the Pakistan Atomic Energy

Hundreds of Thai farmers rallied to protest a US trademark on a strain of rice developed by a Texas company. The roughly 500 protesters, worried that the trademark of the name "Jasmati" for a rice