The drawbacks of modern, high yield crops are prompting farmers and researchers to go back to traditional, well adapted varieties.

A study in rural Bangladesh has found victims of watery diarrhoea treated with rice-based oral rehydration solution (rice-ORS) recover faster and require fewer hospitalisations than those treated

BEANS are one of the few crops grown for beauty as well as nutrition. Archaeologists in South America have excavated beautiful, multicoloured bean seeds buried with Indians 10,000 years ago. Analysis

THE DISCOVERY that bird brains call appreciate the finer nuances of music has a learn of scientists harmonising at Rockefeller University in New York. The scientists, led 13, Claudio Mello, have

GOAT RAISERS in the Philippines have discovered that ipil-ipil (Leucaena leucocephala), which has been planted in several parts of the world including India, and is a panacea for

Recent studies indicate increasing pollution may be hampering the atmosphere's inherent cleansing abilty

THE INCREASE in phosphate wastes released into rivers over the last 20 years may in turn have increased the frequency of "red tides" (coloured springtime algal efflorescences) which poison and kill

BACTERIA large enough to be visible to the human eye have been discovered within the gut of a surgeonfish (Acanthurus nigrofuscus) caught off the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (Science, Vol. 256,

THE "arms race" between plants that produce defence mechanisms to ward of foragers such as deer and animals who attempt to evolve mechanisms to counter these defences, have long intrigued