MIRZA: The success story of banana cultivation and the huge plot of land under banana by a youth of Dhangargaon area in Kamrup district has become a source of inspiration for his fellow villagers.

Shiral (Solapur) : Two months ago, Kailash Thate, a young man with 10 acres of farmland close to the Ujjani dam, set up an agro-processing unit to extract fibres from banana stems that is used to manufacture paper.

Some traders in Rajshahi allegedly use chemicals or employ kerosene stove method for quick ripening of green bananas, posing threats to public health.

For a state that consumes nearly Rs 500 crore worth of bananas every year - one of the highest in the country - it is no mean achievement that it is now growing its own bananas and that too king-size. What started as a small attempt in some of the districts of the state such as Ludhiana and Mohali in 2006, after farmers and scientists from Ludhiana-based Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) went to Terai area of Uttaranchal to get tips on banana cultivation, is now spreading across the central and southern parts of the state.

Side effects of banana: A legal battle between banana farmers and environmentalists has reached the Philippines Supreme Court. Residents from Davao city have filed a petition to uphold a March 2007 ban on aerial spraying of fungicide on banana plantations. The group claims the spraying has led to various health problems and poisoned the water table in areas adjoining the plantations, like

power of the big Banana: A court of appeals in the Philippines recently sided with the banana growers and exporters of the country and allowed the continuation of aerial spraying of pesticides. The

The World Trade Organization has ruled against the eu's import tariffs on bananas. It backed the us, which argued that eu import duties of

The World Trade Organisation has ruled in favour of a US complaint against EU banana imports, a US trade official said. The EU has given a group of former colonies a small quota of duty-free exports to Europe, while taxing all Latin American bananas -many grown by US-based companies. The banana dispute is the WTO's longest-running, and the current EU import regime replaces one deemed in breach of WTO rules in 2001 after a complaint by several American nations. Thomson, Geneva