GM crops are being cultivated for the last 15 years in many countries and culminating in the last year, GM crops were planted in more than 1 billion hectares (b ha) by nearly 15 million farmers. In India, about 6.3 million farmers cultivated Bt cotton last year (http://www.isaaa.org) in more than 9 million hectares (m ha) for protection against the ravages of the most devastating cotton pest, the American bollworm, Helicoverpa armigera.

The probability of crop-to-wild gene flow depends on the geographic distribution of crops and their wild relatives. In this context, caution has been advised in relation to the release of transgenic crops into their centres of origin, i.e. the geographical regions in which they were domesticated, and where wild relatives and/or weedy forms persist. In countries with high plant biodiversity like India, where almost 400 species of crop wild
relatives are found, this is a relevant approach. (Correspondence)

Decomposition of monsoon rainfall time series into mutually uncorrelated intrinsic mode functions (IMF) has distinct advantages in empirical forecasting of rainfall quantity ahead of the season. The attractive feature of this approach is its ability to separate out the nonlinear (non-Gaussian) and the linear (Gaussian) parts of the data as uncorrelated narrow-band processes for further modelling. (Correspondence)

The projections of climate change-induced decline in food production have become a matter of grave concern for food security across the world. Experimental evidences of elevated CO2-induced reduction in grain micronutrients content, particularly Zn and Fe, further add to the problem. (Correspondence)

Climate change-induced natural disasters represent an additional stress on a country’s infrastructure. In India, investments of US$ 120 billion have been planned for infrastructure asset creation during 2011–2012. This article highlights some crucial reverse impacts of environment on the energy, aviation, water supply and irrigation, road, communications, posts, health and housing, and railway infrastructure assets. The critical climate parameters of temperature, precipitation, sea level rise and extreme events pose direct and indirect impacts on infrastructure assets.

Habitat fragmentation, loss of habitat and other anthropogenic activities have caused a population decline in many species, caused restriction in their distribution or even led to their local extinction. We attempted to understand the impact of such pressures on the newly identified and possibly the largest population of the endangered lion-tailed macaque, Macaca silenus in the Reserve Forests of Sirsi and Honnavara, Karnataka, using a temporal series of satellite images.

European foulbrood disease is a broad disease in honey bees caused by a bacterium, Melissococcus plutonius. By now, various herbal and chemical drugs have been tried to control it. In the present study, the effects of different organic extracts of three different bryophytes and a standard drug (positive control) have been tried to control the bacterium in vitro by using agar disc diffusion and micro broth dilution method.

This article reports the greenhouse gas emissions of anthropogenic origin by sources and removals by sinks of India for 2007 prepared under the aegis of the Indian Network for Climate Change Assessment (INCCA) (note 1). The emission profile includes carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide.