Old mandate, new law

WHEN Annapurna Devi visited the rainforests of the Amazon she wanted to bring back a memento that embodies the pristine beauty of the region. She chose some necklaces and earrings made of olho-de-cabra seeds, or the red and black tento seeds, which the indigenous communities turn into beautiful jewellery. Devi was the only one among a host of visitors from other countries to buy the jewellery. The Americans, Canadians and British loved the jewellery as much but said they could not carry it home because customs officials would confiscate any item that contained foreign plant material.

Science and Technology - Briefs

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Storm alert

Green monster nailed

HUANGLONGBING (HLB) or greening disease in citrus plants has been known for over 100 years. It does not have a cure and its symptoms emerge over time. First seen in Asia, the disease has spread across the world, threatening the fruit industry. In absence of effective control methods, the infected trees are culled.

Science and Technology - Briefs

COMPUTER SCIENCES Super disc Typical compact discs (CDs) store 600-700 megabytes (MB) of digital data. A new technology can now help develop CDs that can hold 2 terabytes or 2,000,000 MB of data. Instead of packing more data on the surface, the idea is to make an optical film with 64 data layers.

Science and Technology - Briefs

Chemistry From nature’s basket

Letters - June 30, 2012

GM ignorance At its best

Orange tumbles

A beaming Uday Wath hugs the trunk of his sturdy, disease-free Nagpur orange tree. All around him are trees drooping with the fruit, large and healthy. The tree trunks are singularly free of both telltale gummosis wounds and bluish white bordeaux paste, the chemical meant to prevent them.

Mobile tester for crop diseases

How does the device work? Gene-Z is based on the technology used to identify cancer markers in the body. It has a microfluidic chip and a device to carry out and visualise the reaction, and is operated by an iPod Touch or Andriod-based tablet. The pathogen is swabbed off the plant tissue and placed on the chip. It is then inserted into the device, which performs genetic analysis and identifies the pathogen and extent of the disease. Some pathogens, however, require to be processed before they can be tested by Gene-Z. Interviewee:  Syed Hashsham

Not so hard to crack

JUST when India thought it would be able to get a big chunk of the global walnut market and began planning towards it, a rare fungus started playing spoilsport. Plant pathologists have isolated the fungus from walnut nurseries in the country for the first time. So far Italy and Argentina have reported sporadic occurrences of the infection in walnut nurseries in 1999 and 2004, respectively. Little research has been done on how to combat the fungus, which kills seedlings within a month of infection. Unless India acts fast, analysts say, it might hit the country’s burgeoning walnut industry. With a 50 per cent rise in production over the previous year, India is all set to be one of the world’s top 10 walnut exporters in the next few years from being the 12th largest exporter.

Coconut cousins

COCONUT trees are found across the world and it is said that they played a fundamental role in human migrations and the development of civilisations. So far, nobody has studied the genetic variability in the tree. Now a study of the DNA shows that coconuts have two well-defined and differentiated populations representing two separate locations of cultivation—the Pacific basin and the Indo-Atlantic Ocean basin.