Standing wheat, green fodder and vegetable crops were damaged when hailstorm hit several villages in the district late last evening.

Reports said 30 to 70 per cent of the crops were damaged. Farmers from Kilorad, Badwasni and other villages today reached at the Deputy Commissioner's office here with a tractor-trailer loaded with hails collected from fields.

Crops on 26L hectare hit; Rs 2600 cr sanctioned for relief

Bhopal: Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, interacting with journalists after a high- level meeting on relief for hailstorm- hit farmers, said that the succession of hailstorms in the state had caused damage to the tune of Rs 13,000 crore.

There is a greater possibility of an El Nino weather pattern emerging this summer, Japan's weather bureau said on Monday, after previously forecasting a 50% chance of the phenomenon that is often l

Says genetically modified crops have an adverse impact on human health

The coalition for a gene modification (GM) Free India in the state has begun holding a series of public meetings to oppose GM field trials. The Environment Ministry had allowed gene modification (GM) trials of more than 200 varieties of rice, wheat, maize, castor and cotton, among other crops last week. Punjab is one of the states that agreed to these field trials.

Thirty-five agricultural scientists, most of them associated with the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), on Tuesday mooted the continuation of field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops under their guidance, without a no-objection certificate (NoC) from the respective state governments.

“Agriculture is a state subject, and state agricultural universities and agriculture departments of respective states must involve themselves in field trials for GM crops without losing time.

Experts from the National Agri Food Institute and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, led by officials of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), have developed a new high-yielding a

Seed companies and agriculture research institutes in India can go ahead with scientific filed trials of different transgenic varieties of GM crops which had got clearance from the government's reg

Reversing his predecessor Jayanti Natarajan’s stance, M Veerappa Moily, Minister for Petroleum, Natural Gas and Environment, has approved the biotech regulator – Genetic Engineering Appraisal Commi

Yellow rust and aphid have attacked wheat crop in the district.

After the first case of yellow rust was detected in Ratangarh village last month, the disease has now affected over 300 acres of the crop. Besides yellow rust, aphid insect has also attacked the crop.

However, according to experts, with nearly 80 per cent land in Punjab still under rice and wheat cultivation and the farmers not very receptive to the idea of resource management, the real challenge is to focus on conservation agriculture.

“There can be no big jumps in the production (of food grains) as the productivity level is already high,” says Dr SS Gosal, Director of Research, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU).