Reply affidavit on behalf of the Central Ground Water Board in the matter of Suo Moto case titled "Haryana 60.48% groundwater over exploited Kurukshetra worst Jhajjar best says" appearing in the Tribune, January 8, 2025. The CGWA report, May 3, 2025 addresses the issue of groundwater exploitation and violation of …
While the cultivation of paddy in Punjab (and Haryana) does need some curbing, the extreme forebodings of either total groundwater exhaustion in Punjab or of the state turning into a desert of paddy growing is not curbed forthwith are unwarranted.
GENETIC engineering -- the ability to manipulate the molecular blueprint of life -- is coming of age. Biotechnology is transforming medicine, agriculture and animal husbandry: In the not too distant future, cancer will no longer be a dreaded disease, crops will be able to resist pests and tomatoes will be …
THE RECENT floods that engulfed more than two-thirds of Bangladesh killed more than 500 people and destroyed one million tonnes of foodgrains, resulting in a loss of $175 million to the government. However, despite Bangladesh renewing demands that India and Nepal control the powerful rivers that flow through their countries, …
THE PAKISTAN government continues to ignore the plight of the boat-dwellers of Manchhar lake. When the waters of Larkana, Shikarpur, Jacobabad and Baluchistan were drained into the lake to reduce waterlogging in these areas, the resultant overflow submerged thousands of acres of agricultural land around it, reports Panos. For the …
India's agricultural universities are producing far too many forestry graduates for the jobs available. Protests by the graduates prompted the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) to write to the department of personnel in the Union home ministry, requesting them to include forestry as an optional paper in the …
ENTOMOLOGISTS have identified a fungus (Pandora delphacis) that can kill two types of pests -- brown planthoppers (Nilaparvata lugens) and green leafhoppers (Nephotettix spp) -- that target the rice crop in India. P Narayanasamy and L Udaya Prabhakar of Annamalai University and R A Humber of the US department of …
CLAIMING that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had become one of the safest in the world because of the safety measures that have been introduced since the 1986 explosion, Ukraine energy minister Vilen Semenyuk has urged the parliament to reverse its decision to shut down the reactor, which has been …
HEAVY metal music buffs who are compulsive hand-bangers need beware because jerking the head to the beat could cause severe injury to their necks (New Scientist, Vol 139, No 1887). Marilyn Kassirer, a neurologist at the Boston University School of Medicine, studied 11 girls and six boys who admitted to …
CALCULATED in monetary terms, the benefits of plants used against cancer is estimated to be $1,100 billion. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development puts the value of a human life at $12.4 million and plant-based cancer drugs save 90,000 lives a year in rich countries. A US Environmental Protection …
EVEN WHILE Doordarshan carried a two-part documentary that indulged in Israel-bashing at prime time, the Israeli publicity machine in Delhi was getting its act together. Since diplomatic relations between the two countries have been fully established, one can expect some skillful image-building manoeuvres from a country that has perfected the …
THOUGH Moeen Qureshi is only interim prime minister of Pakistan, he has dared to challenge the wealthy and influential landowners of the country by imposing a wealth tax on agricultural income. This is something that former prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto did not dare to do, fearing a …
RESEARCHERS in Kenya say a natural means of eradicating the stemborer pest -- the main enemy of maize -- is a 3-mm-long wasp, native to Pakistan. Scientists at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology are reassuring environmentalists who fear that though the wasp may be an economical and …
NEXT TIME you buy an Ayurvedic medicine, don't forget to read the list of ingredients used. For all you know, it might be an allopathic preparation being passed off as Ayurvedic medicine. N A Kshirsagar of King Edward Memorial Hospital in Bombay recently found that a mixture of aspirin and …
EVEN AS the midwestern states in USA are awash with flood waters, farmers in the southeast are contending with a severe drought and face agricultural losses that have already hit $800 million in the Carolinas and Georgia. US department of agriculture authorities say the worst-hit crops in the tri-state area, …
BANGLADESH'S second largest waterbody, Beel Dakatia, once a 31,566-ha tract of flourishing agricultural land and balanced ecology, has been flooded with brackish water for the past decade. A dyke built to contain the 24-km-long and 16-km-wide waterbody, as part of an ambitious coastal embankment project, is to blame for choking …
AFTER the Green Revolution, the next great leap forward in food production is predicted to be in the cerrado region of South America, a grassy area covering more than 200 million ha. This exceeds the total cultivated land in India. Unfortunately, much of the cerrado soil is acidic and, until …
When the Union agriculture ministry announced in July, with great fanfare its decision to ban 12 pesticides and restrict 13 others, it received much kudos from nongovernmental organisations and voluntary agencies. Praise was showered on agriculture secretary M S Gill. However, enquiries by Down To Earth revealed the decision on …
A FAT-RICH diet, widely believed to be unhealthy, acts as an elixir for the Japanese, the world's longest-living people, claim old-age researchers. Before World War II, the lifespan of the Japanese was the lowest in the developed world. "Our cholesterol (counts) used to be very low," says Takao Suzuki, director …
African locusts, which have been infesting parts of Gujarat and Rajasthan since mid-July, are keeping pest control experts on their toes. The agriculture ministry has pressed into action two helicopters and a Vayudoot aircraft, armed with sprayers and insecticides, to fight the locusts that rode a cyclonic storm from Oman …
WHY DOES popcorn pop and not ordinary corn? Because popcorn has a thicker hull and contains starch with superior puffing quality, say Brazilian scientists who compared four varieties of corn and three kinds of popcorn (Nature, Vol 362, No 6419). They found the popcorn kernel's ability to absorb heat efficiently …
