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 …
Climate change and catastrophic events have contributed to rice shortages in several regions due to decreased water availability and soil salinization. Although not adapted to salt or drought stress, two commercial rice varieties achieved tolerance to these stresses by colonizing them with Class 2 fungal endophytes isolated from plants growing …
The challenges that India's agriculture faces in the coming years remain enormous. Though we have achieved self-sufficiency in cereal production, we continue to depend on imports for pulses and edible oils. We continue to face the problem of under-nutrition, particularly among our children and women. Ensuring food and nutritional security …
The UN Conference on the Environment held in 1992 in Rio-de-Janeiro is a landmark in human efforts to keep our planet over blue. Twenty years after Rio, we are struggling to find a pathway of development which concurrently integrates the principles of ecology, economics, equity, ethics and employment. Green Economy …
Let me recall the events leading to the adoption of the New strategy for Agricultural Development in India in the year 1965. After an impressive increase in agricultural production during the first two Five-Year Plans, there was a spell of stagnancy in the early 1960s. Population increased at a rapid …
During the late 1950s and early 1960s food deficits India has been requiring importation of 3 to 4 million tons of grain per year. However because of bad monsoons in 1965 and 1966, imports exploded unpwardly to 10 million tons, and India was in dire straits. It was during this …
Agriculture for the Indian rural people is the way of life, a tradition, which for centuries, has shaped thought, outlook, culture and economic life of the people of the country. It is not a commodity machine but the backbone of the livelihood security system, where more than two-thirds of the …
When we reflect back in the past, we recollect Pandit Nehru's declaration soon after Independence in 1947, 'Everything else can wait but not Agriculture'. In 1948, Mahatma Gandhi orchestrated 'God is bread to the hungry'. This perspective of our national leadership led to the development of research institutions and the …
India's economic success has been remarkable; India's agricultural success will follow. Rural India still needs nurturing, not necessarily by just extra funding, but with vision and leadership addressing issues, with down to earth, workable solutions.
There is a need to break yield barriers through multidimensional approch to achieve food security on a sustainable basis for the people of this country. Cooperatives can play an important role in this direction due to their proximity to farmers. The Indian Farmers' Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), since over the …
Entomopathogenic bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) and its toxins have been extensively used for pest control in agriculture and forestry and in public health programmes since the 1930s. At the core of such application are protein crystals that get synthesised when Bt cells develop spores. The proteins called Cry (from Crystal) …
Ten months after Rajasthan signed its extraordinary memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with seven biotech seed companies, the state government finds itself caught in a cleft stick. Owing to a series of protests by farmers’ organisations, the government has thought it prudent not to execute the MoUs. At the same time, …
The CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology here will sign a memorandum of understanding with the Agricultural Research Development Agency (Arda), Thailand, to carry out joint research for development of the northeastern region. Arda is Thailand
The State has laid stress on inducting a mission mode approach by the Union Government to document and conserve the diverse and unique horticultural germplasms available not only in Assam but also in other parts of the NE region before they get extinct due to overexploitation or negligence. It also …
Agricultural sector is in continuous decline for the last three years, registering an overall 10 percent drop in different major and minor crops output owing to neglected research, discouraging development of local new varieties of crops and allocation of insufficient funds for development. Cotton crop has registered a 10 percent …
Charlie Bragg gazes across his lush fields where fat lambs are grazing, his reservoirs filled with water, and issues a sigh of relief. Things are normal this year and that's a bit unusual of late. His 7,000-acre farm near the Australian town of Cootamundra is testament to the plight facing …
STEM rust that ruined wheat crops in several Asian countries last year is still invincible. Scientists say it has established itself on nearly all resistant wheat varieties developed in the last 50 years. There is no way to control this highly adaptive pathogen, dubbed Ug99. What makes the fungus elusive …
DROUGHT is the worst enemy of crops like chickpea which requires moderate rainfall for growth. Studies till date have focused on how dehydration changes expression of genes that code for proteins vital for the plant’s survival. But there is a dearth of studies that look at the activity of proteins …
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 …
