-The Hindu Business Line   Hubli: Radiation and chemical-induced mutation and subsequent use in recombination breeding at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has resulted in the release of 39 improved crop varieties in oilseeds and pulses in India, said Dr Ratan Kumar Sinha, Director, BARC, Mumbai. Delivering the 25th Annual Convocation address of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, Karnataka, Dr Sinha said nuclear techniques in agriculture is particularly helpful in creating new...

-The United Nations Globalized food systems and the spread of Western lifestyles has spawned an international public health disaster with over a billion people suffering from undernourishment while another billion remain overweight or obese, an independent United Nations expert warned today. “Our food systems create sick people,” said Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, as he presented his latest report to the UN Human Rights Council...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-Nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...

National Sample Survey Organisation's report on the average calorie intake per person in Indian households points to a much higher incidence of poverty in the country than reflected in estimates of the proportion of the population below the official "poverty" line. Among the features that sully India’s “growth story” is the persistence and possible worsening of malNutrition in the country. The subsistence Nutritional intake adopted when defining the official poverty line...

Allocation for a child in anganwadi in State is Rs. 4 a day With food prices going northward, a cup of coffee in Bangalore, on an average, costs Rs. 10 today. In such a situation, how well can a child in an anganwadi in Karnataka be fed on an allocation of Rs. 4 per day? While anganwadi workers in Karnataka are struggling to provide nutritious diet to children on Rs. 3.90 (with...