What, you may ask, is common between potatoes, tomatoes, brinjal, chilli, datura, tobacco and the deadly nightshade (belladonna)? They all belong to a plant family called Solanaceae. The Solanaceae family contains a number of important agricultural plants as well as many psychoactive and toxic plants. Solanaceae species are rich in complex chemicals called alkaloids and contain some of the most poisonous plants known to mankind. They produce alkaloids in their...

Who is afraid of the multinational seed giants? Practically everyone, it seems, barring governments. The more enlightened agricultural scientists, the legion of activists, small farmers and plant breeders across the world have all been worried by the fast dwindling biodiversity and consolidation of the global seed trade through patenting. Now, the UN has joined the chorus of concern but unfortunately its notes, perhaps because it was distant and bass, or...

The Genetic Engineering Advisory Committee (GEAC), a regulatory body comprising of scientists which works with the Ministry of Environment and Forest, has finally waved the green flag for commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal in India on 14 October, 2009. The present recommendation of the GEAC has met with opposition from Greenpeace (http://www.greenpeace.org/) and a host of other civil society organizations. However, commercial cultivation of Bt brinjal may take a year...

Government policies in many developing countries which promote the planting of a narrow base of agricultural crops may hurt farmers in the long run, a United Nations human rights expert warned today. As a result of the global food crisis, developing countries “have massively reinvested in agriculture and have sought to provide farmers with the means of production they need to produce food,” Olivier de Schutter, the Special Rapporteur on...

Loss in food grains estimated at 16 million tonnes  Overall Kharif output can fall by 15 per cent Call for long-term strategy to tackle vagaries of monsoon Erratic monsoon this kharif could reduce the agricultural crop growth to -2 per cent year-on-year, down from an earlier estimate of 1.4 per cent, according to a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) report released here. The report, “Drought in...