-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,...
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Big push for organic tea in India -Roopak Goswami
-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...
More »Centre sits on royalty slabs for bio resources, loses Rs 25,000 cr a year -Jay Mazoomdaar
-The Indian Express It took the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) six years, 18 drafts and a prod from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) to finalise the Guidelines for Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) this August. Three months on, it is yet to notify the rules that would allow it to collect from domestic and foreign companies 0.1-1 per cent of their ex-factory gross sales of products using biological resources and traditional...
More »Putting their name on grain of rice -Snehlata Shrivastav
-The Times of India NAGPUR: Talodhi, a village in Chandrapur district, is emerging as a centre for 'rice breeding' in literal sense. Two retired agricultural scientists from city, a big farming family from the village, the Poshattiwars, and some local farmers have joined hands in developing new genetically pure varieties from locally available varieties. It would not be an exaggeration if Poshattiwars and their team of farmers are called 'farmer scientists' as...
More »A ban on the use of crops with transgenic traits is unscientific and India needs new technologies to raise farm yields-Deepak Pental
Science and technology hold the key to developing low-input, high-output agriculture. The challenge is to use new technologies creatively and to make evidence-based decisions on the deployment of new technologies. Crop breeding is carried out to meet two broad objectives: one, to increase yields of a crop per se and, two, to protect the yield potential by developing crops resistant to diseases, pests and environmental extremes. Both yield-enhancement and yield-stabilisation are...
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