The Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution in its report titled Coarse grains production and distribution, said Considering the fact that more and more states are opting for millets, with a view to encourage remaining states to opt for nutritious and healthy millets in combination with rice …
Improvement in post-rainy sorghum grain yield has been a challenge with M 35-1, a landrace selection released in 1937 dominating the post-rainy (rabi) tracts. It led to stagnation of post-rainy sorghum yields until the importance of specific adaptation was realized in lieu of highly variable soil and climatic conditions of …
Your favourite jowar ki roti may soon carry genes from bacteria that live in the digestive tract. City scientists have successfully developed jowar (sorghum) varieties that are tolerant to drought and salinity. The sorghum varieties get these special properties thanks to a gene called mtlD, derived from Escherichia coli. The …
Acid soils comprise up to 50% of the world's arable lands and in these areas aluminum (Al) toxicity impairs root growth, strongly limiting crop yield. Food security is thereby compromised in many developing countries located in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. In sorghum, SbMATE, an Al-activated citrate transporter, underlies the …
Trial plans for biotech version of crops like rice, cotton, corn, castor, sorghum and potato could be delayed since a crucial meeting of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) was postponed by a month from scheduled date of June 8. The meeting was expected to discuss permission of field trials …
The immediate and most common response by the different organs of a plant to water stress is decrease in turgor. This may be partially or fully adjusted by accumulation of solutes. In the present study sorghum pollen grains were subjected to in vitro osmotic stress using polyethylene glycol (PEG). The …
The people of Zimbabwe have to cope with a difficult political situation, but they also face many other problems daily. Climate change is making entire areas of land infertile and may halve crop yields by 2020. Zimbabwe
Impacts of climate change vary from region to region. The 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) mentions that drier areas will be affected by more droughts while the rainfall regime, in general, will become
The assessment of energy and greenhouse gas balances is part of a larger effort by UN-Energy to provide decision making tools and aids to Governments and others involved in the planning and implementation of bioenergy development. The report
As a war of words rages over biofuels and their impact on world food supplies, researchers in India are promoting sweet sorghum as a crop that combines the best of both worlds. The plants, which grow three metres high in dry conditions, yield grain that can be eaten by people …
A corn-like plant that can grow as high as an elephant's eye on some of Earth's driest farmland shows promise as a "smart" biofuel that won't cut into world food supplies, an agriculture expert said on Monday. Sweet sorghum, used in the United States mostly as animal feed, offers a …
Once, plant breeders dreamed of plumper tomatoes, heartier soybeans and juicier corn kernels. These days, visions of squat poplars and earless corn stalks are dancing in their heads. They are hoping these new fangled crops will make cost-effective biofuels.
One way to cut greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere may be to exploit a particular talent some plants have of locking away carbon. All we need to do is choose the right strains of crops to grow, and they will sequester carbon for us for millennia. That's the idea …
Underlying objective of food security programme in India is to ensure the availability of foodgrains to the common people at an affordable price. The PDS system in India is based on the wheat and rice model, which in many areas were never the staple grains for household consumption. It was …
Sweet sorghum is a special type of sorghum which accumulates sugars in its stalks. The unique high carbon assimilation capability of sorghum crop coupled with another desirable trait of accumulating high levels of extractable sugars in the stalk can be exploited for extensive use of sorghum as raw material for …
