According to a study, Madhya Pradesh farmers exposed to Bt cotton suffered from respiratory problems
Chennai

RENOWNED organic farm scientist Dr G Nammalwar here on Monday cautioned the farmers against cultivating Bt Cotton which had the potential to turn their 1.75 lakh acres of fertile land across Tamil Nadu unproductive in a couple of years.

By Vandana Shiva

Citizens have a right to health and environmental safety. Hence the existing biosafety law needs to be upheld.

While the country has been preoccupied with the Indo-US nuclear deal, there is indifference to the US-India agricultural deal, under which India is being pressurised to dismantle her biosafety regulations to put genetically engineered organisms (GMOs) on a fast track.

London,Aug. 17: A senior minister in the Labour government has attacked Prince Charles for his criticism of genetically-modified crops. The Prince of Wales had claimed earlier this week that firms developing genetically-modified crops risked environmental disaster.

Environment minister Phil Woolas challenged the prince to produce the evidence to back up his claim that genetically-modified crops were linked to climate change. Prince Charles had called genetically-modified crops a "gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity which has gone seriously wrong."

Red gram or pigeon pea is an important pulse crop of India where it is grown on about 3.5 million hectares.

It is a favourite dhal (tuar or arhar) of Indian cuisine and is suitable for rain fed agriculture because it is drought tolerant, needs minimum inputs and produces reasonable yields .
Breakthrough

Specific aphid identified as predominant virus vector the papaya ring spot virus causes extensive damages to papaya, watermelon, squash, cucumber and pumpkin. Scientists suggest that the best way to reduce the loss is to cultivate these plants at a distance from each other and avoid their monoculture. A study, published in the May issue of Phytopathology, has identified a kind of

Indian scientists seek clarity on nitrogen emissions if emissions of reactive nitrogen gases (oxides of nitrogen and ammonia, but especially nitrous oxide) ever get hitched to the international debate on global warming, in the form of a

In the late 1980s and very early 1990s, when scientists worldwide began to highlight global warming as a problem that needed urgent attention, pointing to carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning as the most potent cause, there emerged a counter-discourse that laid the blame of global warming squarely on another greenhouse gas, methane. Then in 1990, the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)