-Hindustan Times DSR ‘tar-wattar’ (good soil moisture), a low-cost mechanical sowing technique to reduce water footprint in the cultivation of water-guzzling rice by 20%, was indigenously developed by scientists of Ludhiana-based Punjab Agricultural University BATHINDA: As farmers are expecting a sharp rise in farm labourers’ demand to charge up to ₹6,000 per acre for paddy sowing this season, direct seeding of rice (DSR), which for the first time comes with an incentive...

-The Telegraph The FSSAI had set a Feb 5 deadline for public feedback on its proposed regulations that outline procedures through which GM foods can be imported in the country A citizen petitioner has through a legal notice asked India’s food authority to withdraw its draft rules on genetically modified foods, saying its proposals would breach environmental regulations and dilute food labelling requirements directed by the Supreme Court. The notice, sent on Friday...

-The Hindu Union Commerce Ministry clarifies after European Commission’s charge. The Centre has identified a Maharashtra-based exporter as the source of the broken rice flagged in Europe as contaminated with genetic modifications (GM) earlier this year, the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday. It added that the 500-tonne consignment was given a non-GMO certification by an independent agency before it was shipped to France. While reiterating that GM rice is not grown commercially in India,...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu The Registrar-General of India (RGI) is preparing to conduct field trials of the first phase of the Census and the National Population Register (NPR) using a mobile application in all the States and Union Territories, a senior government official told The Hindu. The first phase involving house listing and housing census, along with updating the NPR, was scheduled from April 1 last year, but was postponed indefinitely due to the...