-Livemint.com Pigeon Pea variant Pusa Arhar 16 could prove a game changer for inflation-wary policymakers as it has a maturity time of 120 days down from 160-270 days of current varieties New Delhi: Anew high-yielding pulse developed by government scientists at a leading research institute could prove a game changer for inflation-wary policymakers and consumers alike. Pusa Arhar 16, a dwarf pigeon pea created by scientists at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI),...

-DNA India Constant decrease in investment on research and development blamed for carelessly conceived schemes A fishing project in the deserts of Rajasthan, cold storage facilities for bananas in Maharashtra's no-banana Pune district, milk coolers in Gujarat's Sagbara region where there is no milk production and no electricity either… Those are just some of the examples of carelessly conceived government schemes to bolster farm growth at a time share of the...

-Hindustan Times Bhopal: In a 1957 Bollywood classic Naya Daur, man battles machine and prevails. But in the canal irrigated areas of Madhya Pradesh, manual labourers are losing to a combine harvester, a rapid harvesting machine. Combine harvesters that first made their appearance in the 1960s turned out to be more economical and efficient ways of harvesting crops and then on they began to challenge the manual labour. Now the situation has come...

-The Hindustan Times The smog that nearly choked Delhi in November was caused due to the burning of post-harvest rice stalks in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Every year, rice is harvested using Combine harvesters, which leaves a residue in the field. Earlier, harvesting was done by hand and the people who worked on the fields would take out the stalks and use them as food for animals. This practice is...

Since early November, Delhi and large parts of North India have been enveloped in a thick, grey smog, sparking concerns and a debate on what is leading to the rising levels of air pollution. A January 2012 paper by Ridhima Gupta from the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi is drawing linkages between the quality of air in the capital and agricultural practices during harvest season on farms in the neighbouring state...