-The Week A revolutionary farming system is working wonders in Nalanda district Nalanda: If not for an agricultural technique known as SRI (system of rice intensification), Sumant Kumar of Darveshpura in Bihar's Nalanda district would have remained a faceless farmer. In 2012, with the help of the state agriculture department, he tried out SRI on an acre that usually bore only modest yields. It worked, and Sumant got a bumper harvest. An...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Coarse cereals such as pearl millet and sorghum, the hardiest and least risky cereals, are mainly grown in India's arid and semi-arid regions. These crops possess high nutritive and fodder value and are primarily consumed by their producers. On the supply side, there has been a large shift in the area under cultivation to rice and wheat and other commercial crops. On the demand side, the distribution...

-Current Science The developing world faces the tough task of producing adequate food to meet the demands of its burgeoning population, as yield levels of major crops have struck a plateau. Food and nutrition security being the major concerns, agricultural R&D in less-developed countries is at the crossroads. The earlier days, when the benefits from the technological breakthroughs attained by the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research institutes and the public...

-The Guardian     Indian farmers have seen increased yields not just in rice but also in wheat cultivation. Could SCI curb hunger in low-resource communities?     Yields achieved under the system of rice intensification (SRI) have made headlines in recent years, with one farmer in India reported to have produced a record-breaking 22.4 tonnes from one hectare of land in 2011. But why stop at rice? Farmers and NGOs have found that the same...

The poor man’s rich grain is getting richer – a new study published in the Journal of Nutrition shows that a variety of new pearl millet (more commonly known as bajra), which was conventionally bred to be 10% richer in iron helped iron-deficient children under the age of 3 years, to absorb enough of this crucial mineral to meet their physiological requirements. (See links below for full text and a...