-Hindustan Times BHOPAL: Shahdol and Hoshangabad in Madhya Pradesh have the highest percentage of over- and under-nourished children among 100 districts, according to an Annual Health Survey, which, experts said, needed further validation. With 31.3% over-nourished children under the age of five, Shahdol topped the Clinical, Anthropometric and Biochemical (CAB) survey 2014 done in 100 districts of nine states. The district-wise analysis of the CAB survey was released recently in the annual health...

-IFPRI Rising prices and declining consumption of pulses cause concern in terms of both nutrition and food inflation in India. This paper outlines policy strategies to increase the availability of pulses at affordable prices in India and also points out limitations of some of the most common recommendations for achieving these objectives. There seems to be no option but to increase domestic production of pulses in India. The global supply of...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Hindu This is hardly a rice ready for cultivation by farmers — it has not even entered the stage of biosafety evaluation by government regulatory institutions. Recently 110 Nobel Laureates issued a strongly worded plea to Greenpeace to “abandon their campaign against [genetically modified organisms] in general and Golden Rice in particular.” This is not the first time notable scientists have waded into the controversy surrounding genetically modified (GM) crops. What...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Air and dust pollution from road traffic may be a threat to Kashmir's silk sector, already dogged by the lack of cocoon-processing infrastructure, declining production and farmers' abandonment of silkworm-rearing. Scientists at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and the Central Sericulture Research Institute, Pampore, have warned that traffic pollution may significantly reduce food consumption by silkworms and their capacity to spin the fibre. Field observations suggest that silkworms do...