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 …
What are the new challenges for scientists who research on rice? We don't have much water for agriculture today. So, we have to produce more rice using less water. Then, agriculturists have also diversified into other crops, so we need rice varieties that take up less land. There are also …
agricultural research in India could soon run aground. Says Mangala Rai, director general, Indian Council Of Agricultural Research (icar), "Due to restriction on creating new posts and filling vacancies, there is an acute shortage of manpower in the national agricultural research system (nars).' Concurs a January 2005 report of a …
the media has of late celebrated the news of Indian farmers gearing up for a Canadian citizenship. But it actually is a story of a severe resource-drain that affects agriculture, the Indian economy's backbone. An institution responsible for extending research and development gains to India's own agricultural sector is aiding …
Large-scale poverty among farmers and the spurt of suicides by agriculturists in various parts of the country indicates that our agriculture is in crisis. But this crisis is different compared to similar situations, earlier. In the 1960s, when India passed though great famines or food shortages, the country was not …
the use of combine harvesters in India for rice and wheat is generating millions of tonnes of crop residue every year. To dispose the waste, farmers usually burn it. This causes significant loss of nutrients in the soil and destroys its microbes, besides adding to greenhouse emissions, a study by …
a hybrid variety of pearl millet resistant to downy mildew (dm) has been developed jointly by researchers at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (icrisat) in Patancheru near Hyderabad and the Haryana Agricultural University (hau) located in Hissar. Caused by the fungus Sclerospora graminicola, dm is the …
scientists at the Indian Institute of Spices Research (iisr) in Kozhikode have found how bacterial wilt attacks ginger (Zingiber officinale), an important cash crop. Caused by a family of pathogens called Ralstonia solanacearum, the disease spreads quickly and can cause total crop loss. It is one of the major causes …
researchers from the University of Calcutta and the National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning have found high levels of toxic heavy metals in an aquatic plant species in Tiljala wetlands on the eastern fringes of Kolkata. "A rise in the levels of heavy metals has caused genetic …
A researcher from Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics has identified the virus that causes the sterility mosaic disease in pigeonpea (commonly known as tur dal). The finding is significant, as the disease leads to an annual loss of US $300 million in India and Nepal, which account …
scientists from the Hyderabad-based International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (icrisat) are altering the genetic make-up of groundnut to produce varieties that can withstand viral and fungal attacks. One of the genetically modified (gm) varieties, which will effectively ward off the Indian peanut clump virus (ipcv), will be …
a recent development may help farmers in India overcome the problem of pests attacking genetically modified (gm) cotton. Many farmers have started using insect-resistant gm bt cotton licensed by the us biotech giant Monsanto. The gm cotton carries the cry1ac gene of the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which enables it to …
There's good news for coffee-lovers. A naturally decaffeinated coffee plant has been discovered. Researchers in Brazil studied 3,000 coffee plants from Ethiopia and found three with almost no caffeine. The plants apparently lack the enzyme needed to make caffeine. Paulo Mazzafera, who led the team of researchers, revealed: "This is …
now farmers of the developing nations need not make backbreaking efforts to prepare their land for wheat cultivation. Scientists from Bangladesh-based Wheat Research Centre (wrc) have developed a tool that helps cultivate the crop without tilling the land several times. The device, zero tiller, is already popular among farmers across …
Since the first transgenic plant was obtained, great progress has been achieved in GM crops. During the past seven years, the global area of GM crops has increased by more than 35-fold to over 58.7 million hectares (mha) in developed and developing countries. This trend is continuing.
the Union ministry of agriculture (moa) has moved an amendment to the Seeds Act, 1966, and also proposes to create a National Seeds Grid. While the aim of the former is to improve labels on seeds to help the farmer, the latter seeks to facilitate the availability of seeds. The …
Ladakh was opened to tourism in 1971. Since then the tourist inflow has increased several times over (see graph: Welcome to Ladakh). Though Ladakh gets more foreign tourists, domestic tourists have increased recently. The biggest tourist activity is trekking and jeep safaris; the biggest tourist attractions of Ladakh are its …
In Ladakhi, lango khel means conquering the highest point of a pass in the mountains. In Ladakhi schools, it means the matriculation (class X) examination. From 1947 to 1998, matriculation results in Leh district hovered between 0-5 per cent. The reasons are not difficult to fathom. Children grew up speaking …
