-Outlook Pulses are falling off the poor man’s plate. Price rise may hit the middle class next. Pulses—all-important as a source of protein—are set to be spoilers this year in the government’s endeavour to keep a check on food inflation. Already, over the last nine months, the prices of some pulses have jumped 64 per cent in major cities. This is because of below-normal monsoon last year, compounded by untimely rain and...

-PTI A group of American students led by an Indian has developed a low-cost way to improve the Yield of agricultural produce for the farmers and reduce the use of fertilizers in Telangana through desilting of ponds. "A group of students from here in a year-long study in Telangana have found that silt from ponds reduces the use of fertilizers by 36 per cent and increases the crop Yield by nearly 50...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: The Tea Board of India is giving a big push to organic tea production in the country for the first time by providing 25 per cent more subsidy than the normal subsidy of 30 per cent. This has for the first time been incorporated in the Twelfth Plan by the board to give a boost to organic tea, which has been gaining momentum in the country. Besides, it has a...

-Hindustan Times Scientists at IIT Roorkee have come up with a new construction technique for earthquake resistant housing using recycled pieces of rubber tyres and the scheme is based on the principle of dissipating energy. Pankaj Agarwal of the department of earthquake engineering, IIT Roorkee told HT: “This is based on interlocking of pre-cast slotted concrete blocks with the help of energy dissipation links. These links are prepared by recycling pieces of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union agriculture ministry is probing the circumstances under which a senior government scientist purportedly tried to malign vaccines used to protect livestock from foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks that can threaten India's milk Yields. An expert panel from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has told the agriculture ministry that Bhoj Raj Singh, a microbiologist at an ICAR research centre, has "caused damage" to the reputation of India's foot-and-mouth...