COVID-19: 60% farmers suffered yield loss on their harvest, shows survey

Survey aimed to evaluate the impact of the nationwide lockdown against the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on agricultural production …

Re-imagining food systems crucial for climate, economic resilience: Nutrition report

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic pushes government to act on reforms of food systems with urgency

Rogue GM crops wreak havoc

Monsanto’s unauthorised GM wheat in the US has spooked the world, but contamination is widespread

Monsanto told to quit India

Farmers from 20 states to present national flag made from non-Bt organic cotton to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for Independence Day

COVID-19: Food waste during pandemic can worsen climate emergency

The median amount of food waste per capita in large developed economies is significantly higher than in large developing economies

Lost in plantation

Millions of growers and workers are in distress in Kerala, the plantation capital of India, as domestic and international prices of cash crops …

Scientists, activists are locked in

Deepak Pental, former vice-chancellor of Delhi University and currently director of the university’s Centre for Genetic Manipulation of …

What's the fuss about Bt brinjal?

Mohammad Rafiqul Islam Mondal, director-general of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), is among the handful of people who have …

Chhattisgarh will not allow GM crops

Chandrasekhar Sahu, agriculture minister of Chhattisgarh, is passionate about making farming a viable proposition for farmers. He has written …

GM maize and its health implications for humans

Michael Antoniou, head of the Nuclear Biology Group in the UK, has been studying the health effects of genetically modified (GM) crops since 1995.…

Don't need subsidies, give us the right price

For most Indians, Mahendra Singh Tikait is the man who brought Delhi to its knees in 1988 with a rally that brought the national capital face to …

Profiting from disaster

Zoramthanga , the chief minister of Mizoram, has many reasons to reminisce the birth of his party, the Mizo National Front, an insurgent group …

Linkage between science and public policy has weakened

M S Swaminathan, popularly known as the father of India’s Green Revolution, has been associated with national agricultural research system (…

GEAC has power only to withdraw permission

Arjula R Reddy, a plant geneticist, was appointed co-chairperson of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) in 2009. At present, he …

GM crop benefits are all in future

Nearly 40 years ago, Marc Van Montagu of Ghent University in Belgium, along with fellow researcher Jeff Schell, discovered that Agrobacterium …

The inside story

Bad health is good business. The pharmaceutical industry knows that. But now bad health is turning out to be good business for the food industry …

Private sector is profiting from vacuum left by ICAR

In the agriculture research hierarchy, Swapan Kumar Datta occupies the second rung, one of eight deputy director generals (DDGs) in the Indian …

‘Stopping GM trials is anti-farmer’

Genetically modified (GM) mustard hybrid DMH-11 developed by Delhi University’s Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants ran into …

Who is watching GM crops?

As India gets ready to unleash a vast number of genetically modified (GM) food crops, politicians have joined activists in opposing engineered …

Paan loses flavour

Iconic paan no more appeals to farmers, traders and common people. They say the contagious spread of chewing tobacco, especially gutkha, is fast …

Is the joyride over ?

There was fear in the 1960s. Would India continue to wait for food imports to feed itself? The scientific community came up with an answer that …

Maize Mania

Maize has become the queen of cereals, courted by state governments, seed companies, farmers and the feedstock and starch industries as the crop …

Global food crisis: causes and implications for India

Is there a global crisis unravelling? World food reserves are at their lowest in 25 years and the prices of most food crops are at a record high. …

Dealing with crop stresses and scandals

Subbanna Ayyappan has made history in the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (IACR) by becoming the first non-crop scientist to head this …

Science under siege

Agricultural science has ossified in India. Despite a vast network of public research institutions and agriculture universities across the country,…