-The Telegraph New Delhi: Five years after sequencing the pigeonpea genome, Indian scientists have identified Madhya Pradesh as the centre of origin of this nationwide staple legume and discovered genes they say will allow the expansion of pigeonpea cultivation. Scientists at the International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) near Hyderabad and their collaborators in Australia, China and the US yesterday announced the results of a new study that has traced...

-VillageSquare.in The constant swing in the prices of tur dal in Telangana from one year to the next and tardy implementation of the government’s procurement mechanism have made life tough for thousands of subsistence farmers in Kodangal and Husnabad Husnabad and Kodangal are just 110 km from the cyber city of Hyderabad. In the last week of March, it was a beginning of a long dry spell, with temperatures hovering around the...

-The Indian Express For farmers, the main source of their woes is a bumper crop. If 2015 was the year of arhar (pigeon-pea) – retail prices of the milled dal scaled Rs 180-200 per kg levels in October and contributed hugely to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s defeat in the Bihar Assembly polls – 2016 is set to close with the humble legume virtually disappearing from the public radar. The new crop, which has...

-The Indian Express Govt must learn from mistakes in onions and potatoes, agriculture should be spared of bearing the burden of its inflation targeting. Last week, Union Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a 5% subsidy on onion exports in the form of transferable duty credit scrips that can be used to pay customs, excise or service tax. On top of it, the Maharashtra government extended a Rs 100 per quintal grant to...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prices of all major pulses have crashed, and arhar, in particular, is now selling in the range of Rs 120 and Rs 136 a kg in the four metro cities. Arhar is retailing at Rs 102 per kg even in Patna from where Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had launched an attack on the Centre's failure to check prices with his slogan "Arhar Modi" just...