Iron is an important micronutrient essential for production of red blood cells (RBCs). It is a vital component of haemoglobin that carries oxygen from the lungs to all parts of the body. Iron has an imperative role to play in the human body. It enables physical and mental growth and production of enzymes during recovery from illness or after strenuous exercise. A number of complications
occur due to insufficient iron in the body.

Conservation agriculture (CA) is an agricultural management practice in which there is minimum soil disturbance, retention of residue for soil cover and rotation of major crops. In contrast, soil in traditional agriculture is intensively tilled to prepare a fine and well-pulverized seedbed. Soil tillage or land preparation is the most energy-consuming operation among all field operations. Compared to traditional agriculture, farmers can save up to 40% of time, labour and fuels in CA.

At the turn of the century and the millennium, Science carried a series of essays titled Pathways of Discovery. An extremely readable and characteristically eloquent essay on Infectious History still holds a place, albeit indistinct and receding, in my memory. The author, Joshua Lederberg, was one of the most influential figures of 20th century biology and a writer of rare scholarship. In his essay, Lederberg traces the history of the relationships between men and microbes; a long history of

From the 17th century, Cinchona figured prominently in European pharmacopiae. Many European countries were frantically after Cinchona in the early 18th century. In the 18th century, a search for this tree occurred consistently. The
usefulness of the bark of Cinchona in treating fevers was established and the European medical personnel were
exploring for substitutes, driven by the following reasons: trade monopolies necessitated the search for species that had

Increasing urban surface temperature due to change of natural surfaces is one of the growing environmental problems in urban areas, especially in cities like Delhi. The present work is an attempt to assess the urban surface temperature in Delhi using remote sensing and GIS techniques. ASTER datasets of thermal bands were used to assess the land surface temperature (LST) using temperature emissivity separation technique. Ward-wise population density was calculated from the Census of India 2001 data to correlate the population density with LST.

Land-cover changes occurring before 1800 are often ignored in the estimation of CO2 emissions, probably because they are poorly documented in most tropical countries. India appears to be an exception to this rule. It was possible to reconstitute the main stages of the land-cover history for a large region of South India, and therefore to retrace the dynamics of CO2 emissions during nearly 1000 years. It was then possible to demonstrate that 25% of the total emissions occurred before 1800, and are mistakenly considered as more recent emissions.

Our earlier studies reported development of transgenic strawberry for salinity stress and standardization of transformation protocol. In view of the projections of global climate change and their implications on the ability of strawberry to adapt to such changes, we extended our studies to know the possible role of such transgenic plants in contributing to
sustainable strawberry production and also made some basic studies to analyse the behaviour of osmotin (transgene)/in vitro-regenerated transgenic strawberry plants.

The article reviews and summarizes the climate change mitigation and adaptation work undertaken by ICRISAT. The effects of climate change are already being experienced in several parts of the world. Even though the effects of climate change will be felt over all kinds of agricultural production systems, they will be more pronounced in dryland areas

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are ubiquitous atmospheric constituents of both anthropogenic and natural origin. VOCs are important precursors of tropospheric ozone (O3), and can impact air quality and global climate. Most of primary VOCs and their oxidized products makeup a major fraction of secondary pollutants in urbanized regions. Due to fast reaction rates mainly with the hydroxyl radical (OH), the VOCs control the oxidizing capacity of the troposphere. Measurements of VOCs are important to study the photochemical transformation, both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Pakistan is ranked fourth among the top five cotton-producing countries in the world. About 70–80% of the cultivated
area is under Bt cotton in Pakistan. Bollworm (Helicoverpa armigera) is the major pest of cotton. It causes 31.73–
36.45% yield losses and these are reduced by heavy pesticide application. There has been a tremendous increase in
the import and use of pesticides. Consequently, about 7.7 billion rupees is spent on pesticides every year. Considering
the total pesticide usage (94,265 metric tonnes in 2007–08), 70% is being used exclusively on cotton.