Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item titled "Nayar river is vanishing - a yatra reveals conservation goes beyond science and policy" appearing in ‘The Down To Earth’ dated 03.06.2025. The original application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled "Nayar …
almost 57 per cent of geographical area in India suffers soil degradation. The reason attributed for this is often chemical intensive agricultural practices. But a recently published research justifies chemical intensive agriculture saying it maintains soil health. The study has been criticized on several counts. It says organic carbon in …
In ancient India, agriculturists were quite aware of the relation between soil properties and crop production. Several systems of soil classification were in vogue. Ancient Indian scriptures contain elaborate injunctions regarding the use of various kinds of manures for crop production.
how does moist soil get the sweet smell? It's a protein called geosmin that contributes the rich aroma. Though geosmin was identified more than a century ago, researchers from Rhode Island have recently been able to discover it and identify its characteristics. Led by David Cane, scientists from Brown University …
lakkhan Raghuwanshi had a bad harvest last monsoon. The farmer from Shyampur village, Guna district, cultivated soyabean, wheat and chana in 121 hectare (ha), of which he sowed soyabean in 61 ha. Despite the high-quality seeds sowed, the yield was a meagre 15 quintals per ha. "I got my land …
biodiversity-rich Amazon is more like a desert when it comes to soil microbes, while an arid desert is a teeming microbial Amazon, two us researchers have found. Noah Fierer and Robert Jackson of Duke University studied the diversity of soil bacteria in 98 locations in South and North America and …
soil produces almost 70 per cent more of the polluting oxides of nitrogen (nox) than previously believed, claims a new study based on satellite data. Led by Lyatt Jaegl
an international study has identified north India as one of four hotspots worldwide where rainfall seems to be directly linked to the amount of moisture in the soil. The finding of the ongoing Global Land-Atmosphere Coupling Experiment (glace) comes at the time when India is contemplating to improve its region-wise …
The Maharashtra government will be distributing Soil Health Cards to 20,000 farmers in 100 select villages as part of the Krishi Saptak initiative launched last year. Based on soil studies, the cards will list the vital components of a particular patch and decide future use of manure and pesticide. Says …
Desolate, cold, inhospitable, relegated to the backyards of exploration and knowledge. Antarctica did not emerge from this unfortunate fate till less than 100 years ago, before which, whalers and seafarers were its only visitors. Cartographers barely acknowledged its presence (or chose to ignore it altogether). And the first explorations, which …
It is the earth's final frontier. Antarctica, a gigantic mass of ocean-encased rocky islands south of the Antarctic Circle, is the earth's southern-most continent. There is no place colder or drier. Stark but majestic, uncompromisingly bleak but alluring, 98 per cent of the continent's 14 million kilometres (km) is sheathed …
A 1996 expert group report on the Indian Antarctic programme says: "The programme has so far been working in complete isolation with no substantial element of international cooperation. While actual attempts are being made by various countries through the aegis of SCAR (Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research) to join hands …
On a hot June day in 1981 S Z Qasim, then environment secretary, reached out to answer a telephone. The caller was Indira Gandhi, the prime minister. The conversation was brief and to the point. "Can India reach Antarctica?' asked the prime minister. Qasim, who had only an academic knowledge …
It is ironic that while India ranks third in fertiliser use worldwide, it ranks 14 and 16 respectively in the production of rice and wheat. It is even more ironic that India’s fertiliser policy ensures precisely such a result. Fertiliser use in India is dictated by the larger perceived need …
Agricultural growth in India has always laboured under the burden of producing more. The idea was: grow only foodgrains. That meant: not ecologically adapted cereals such as millets, but rice and wheat. The green revolution programme was single-minded: it came up with hyv (high-yielding variety) seeds for rice and wheat …
A third factor has led to the current debility of soils in India: irrigation. That is to say, water over-use. To feed the rice-wheat mentality, net irrigated area rose from 20.8 million ha in 1950 to 53.5 million ha in 1995-1996. Fed on irrigation, the agricultural area grew from a …
Soils are a very slow renewable resource. To reclaim them requires, above all, a long-term plan. With falling productivity, the realisation has sunk in that soils cannot be blindly mined, and that humans cannot just plough through the ecology they interact with. apply gypsum: Seven lakh ha of land in …
What is soil? Nothing but simple clod, always taken for granted. But dig deeper, and you will find that this simple clod generates complex equations of survival and wealth, equity and polity. It is a big little ecological variable. Its influences remain hidden from us. function openpoptable(){ var popurl="http://dte-new/dte-new/html/20030131_cover2.htm" winpops=window.open(popurl,"","width=475,height=500, …
pedro sanchez, head of Nairobi-based International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (icraf), was recently awarded the World Food Prize for his research into low-technology methods for improving soil fertility. His research reveals that by using leguminous trees rather than plants, soil fertility can be improved cost-effectively. Crop rotation using legumes …
