FG distributes 300
rice mills to farmers, millers in states
MARCH 31,
201911:56 S
The Federal
Government says it has distributed no fewer than 300 rice mills to farmers and
millers in different states of the country in 2018. Speaking with Newsmen in Abuja, Chief Audu Ogbeh, the
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, said government would also
distribute more to farmers in 2019. “In 2018, we distributed 300 rice mills to
different states, people applied from all over the country. “There is hardly
any state where we have not sent rice mills and we are bringing more,’’ he
said. Ogbeh assured citizens that government is working toward ensuring further
increase in rice production and other agricultural produce to create jobs and wealth
for the people.
https://www.vanguardngr.com/2019/03/fg-distributes-300-rice-mills-to-farmers-millers-in-states/
BJP memo to CEO against
BJD
Earlier, the
saffron party had moved the Enforcement Directorate and also met Income Tax
Commissioner and submitted a memorandum complaining against those private
companies.
Published: 01st April 2019 05:13
AM | Last Updated: 01st April 2019 09:36
BHUBANESWAR: The
State unit of BJP on Sunday petitioned the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO)
against the BJD for allegedly distributing mobile phones among Biju Yuva Vahini
(BYV) volunteers across all the districts to woo voters.
A delegation
of the saffron party, led by State BJP vice-president Samir Mohanty, met CEO
Surendra Kumar and submitted a memorandum alleging that a few private companies
are showing undue favour to BJD by distributing free mobile phones among BYV
volunteers in all 314 blocks of the State. The BJP delegation said some mining
and chit fund companies and rice millers have been assigned to distribute at
least 5,000 mobile phones among BYV volunteers in each block. The ruling party
has planned to distribute 20 lakh mobile handsets to voters before the election
with an expenditure of `750 crore.
Alleging that
the district and block level Government officials are engaged in distribution
of mobile, the delegation demanded immediate action against the BJD as it
violates the Model Code of Conduct.
Earlier, the saffron party had moved the Enforcement Directorate and also met Income Tax Commissioner and submitted a memorandum complaining against those private companies.
Earlier, the saffron party had moved the Enforcement Directorate and also met Income Tax Commissioner and submitted a memorandum complaining against those private companies.
Dacoity bid
foiled
Berhampur: Baidyanathpur police foiled a dacoity and arrested four criminals on Sunday. While patrolling during wee hours, the police saw a group assembled near an isolated place in Chandan Nagar near NH-16. Seeing the police, the group tried to escape but four of them were overpowered. During search, police seized one country-made pistol, one crude bomb, sword, iron rod, cycle chain and a motorcycle.
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China develops new rice strain with high yield, disease resistance
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-01
16:33:59|Editor: Yurou
NANJING, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have bred a new
strain of rice with both high disease resistance and high yield, Nanjing
Agricultural University (NAU) announced.
A research team led by Professor Yang Donglei of the State Key
Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement and NAU in eastern
China's Jiangsu Province, utilized a high-yield gene, coded Ideal Plant
Architecture1 (IPA1), to enhance the plant's disease resistance against the
bacterial blight of rice without undermining yields.
Yang's team found that downregulation of miR-156 and
overexpression of IPA1, a target gene of microRNA-156 (miR-156) that has access
to the regulation of multiple processes in the grain's growth and development,
would improve disease resistance but reduce rice yield.
To find a way out of the dilemma, researchers set an
"alarm" on the novel strain of rice to signal bacterial blight
invasion and thus raised expression of IPA1 to enhance disease resistance.
"We call the new strain of rice 'HIP,'" Yang said,
noting that the team has identified miR-156-IPA1 as a regulator of the
crosstalk between growth and defense and bred the new strain of rice.
Further research showed that without pathogenic infection, IPA1
expression of the new plant strain only increases slightly, which enhances
yield-related traits including fewer tiller buds, larger spikes and thick
stems.
The research findings were published in the latest issue of
Nature Plants, one of the top international academic journals on plant biology.
Farmers fearing rice imports told: Milk your
carabaos
By: Anselmo Roque - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:16 AM April 01,
2019
ALTERNATIVE INCOME Farmers are being
encouraged to try their hands on carabao dairying, which would make the tough
farm animals, shown here treading a road in a town in Isabela province, a
source of income to replace earnings that would be lost through rice import
liberalization. —VILLAMOR VISAYA JR.
SCIENCE CITY
OF MUÑOZ — With farmers worrying about a possible drop in income due to rice
import liberalization, an official of the Philippine Carabao Center (PCC) here
asked them to try their hands on carabao dairying to earn extra money.
Dr. Arnel
del Barrio, PCC executive director, said carabao dairying could be done right
at the farmers’ backyard or in some areas of their farms.
“In due
time, the tended animals can give a daily income for 10 months because of the
milk yield,” Del Barrio said.
He said
farmers may set aside certain areas to grow corn and sorghum plants for
silage-making for carabao feed, which is now in great demand.
Greener
pasture
“We have
farmers and entrepreneurs who made good in carabao dairying and in
silage-making,” he said.
Melchor
Correa, 47, of San Jose City, made huge profits in carabao dairying alongside
rice farming.
He built a
herd of 30 dairy carabaos. His average daily milk yield in 2017 was 57 liters,
which he sold for P54 each liter, or P3,028.
Carabao
dairying has also improved the life of Henry Orbino and his family in Iloilo.
Orbino’s wife used to work as a domestic helper in Dubai while their four
children were left in the care of their relatives.
After
hearing about carabao dairying in West Visayas State University, Orbino tried
it out and started with three dairy carabaos.
Good
examples
Orbino said
his herd grew in number and his profit increased, allowing him to send their
children to college and his wife to return from abroad to help him in the
business.
“We have
many other examples of simple farmers whose lives have improved because of
carabao dairying. Many of them are getting income bigger than what they were
earning from rice farming,” Del Barrio said.
He said the
market for carabao’s milk is growing bigger as many establishments were making
milk-based products.
“It’s a very
lucrative enterprise now,” Del Barrio said. “A chemist, who used to work in a
big company in Clark Freeport, proved that there is high demand for silage and
the income is very, very good.”
DA: Rice output
goal for 2019 still attainable
March 31, 2019
The Department of Agriculture
(DA) remains optimistic that Philippine unmilled rice output would reach a
record high of 20 million metric tons (MMT) despite the onslaught of El Niño.
Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F.
Piñol said the DA is banking on the increase in wet season harvest to offset
palay damaged by the weather
phenomenon.
phenomenon.
“On rice production, we are still
targeting to produce over 20 million metric tons despite El Niño,” Piñol said
in an interview with reporters last week.
“Our reported loss is around
120,000 metric tons, which has not yet been validated. We could recover that in
the wet season,” Piñol added.
Piñol said the DA revised its
initial 2019 palay target of 20.085 MMT to 20 MMT due to the damage caused by
El Niño.
The country’s palay output in
2018 declined by 1.09 percent to 19.066 MMT, from 19.276 MMT recorded in 2017.
The reduction in output was attributed to a series of weather disturbances,
including a super typhoon,
last year.
last year.
According to the Philippine
Statistics Authority (PSA), palay production in 2018 declined slightly due to a
contraction in harvest area and yield.
In its March forecast, the PSA
also revised downward its projected palay output in the first quarter to 4.62
MMT from its initial estimate of 4.65 MMT.
The latest estimate of the PSA
indicated that palay production in the January-to-March period would remain
flat.
“Harvest area may contract by 3.3
percent from 1.194 [million] hectares in 2018,” the PSA said.
“However, yield per hectare may
increase to 4 metric tons from the previous year’s level of 3.87 MT,” it added.
Rice imports during El Niño years
usually exceed 2 MMT as the weather phenomenon dries up farms and destroys
standing crops.
For 2019, the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) said Philippine rice imports could reach a
record of 2.6 MMT, but this will be driven largely by strong appetite from
traders following the effectivity of the rice trade liberalization law.
In its monthly grains report, the
USDA projected that rice exports to the Philippines would expand by 4 percent
to 2.6 MMT, from 2.5 MMT in 2018.
“[The 2.6-MMT import volume] is a
record not seen since the international price spike in 2008 and would make the
Philippines the second-largest global importer in 2019,” the report read.
Government data submitted to the
World Trade Organization indicated that this could be the biggest volume of
rice to be imported by the Philippines in history, overshadowing the volume it
purchased in 2008.
In 2008, Philippine rice imports
reached 2.39 MMT, of which 2.297 MMT were bought by the National Food Authority
(NFA). In 2010, the country’s rice purchases from abroad reached 2.369 MMT.
‘Thinning supply’
Piñol said, however, that the
country cannot simply depend on imports as thinning rice supply will not be
enough to meet the requirements of the world’s expanding population.
A local agronomist also said in
February that the implementation of the rice trade liberalization law will not
necessarily make imports cheaper, as the projected hike in the demand for the
staple could make it more expensive and lead to another price crisis.
Additional pressure on thinning
rice supply, University of the Philippines Los Baños Agriculture Economist
Teodoro Mendoza said, could jack up international and domestic prices as the
Philippines is one of the biggest rice importers.
Higher demand for rice in
countries like Africa, India and China could further exert pressure on
international prices and lead to volatility, Mendoza said.
“It has already happened in 2008
when we imported 2.5 MMT. We were the world’s largest [rice] importer at that
time. We also triggered the increase in rice prices which reached $1,000 per
metric ton,” he said.
“At that time, our exchange rate
was at 47 to the dollar, but now, if rice prices will increase to $1,000 per
MT, rice prices, including transportation costs, could reach about P65 per
kilogram [kg],” Mendoza added.
Mendoza said the law will
eventually discourage farmers from planting rice as prices will go down. He
noted that when the President signed the law, the prices of rice already have
fallen to around P15 to P17 per kg, from P20 per kg.
He also said the law will
displace some 10 million Filipinos working as farmers and farm hands, and other
workers in allied industries. This, Mendoza said, could cut rice
self-sufficiency level to 70 percent from the current 93 percent.
Nine months after floods devastated Kerala,
paddy farmers in Kuttanad reap bumper harvest
The silt dumped in their fields during the
July, August floods has increased the fertility of the soil, say agricultural
scientists.
Labourers fill rice in jute bags in Kuttanad on
March 15. | TA Ameerudheen.
Mar 31, 2019 · 09:00 am
TA Ameerudheen
Paddy farmer Biju Alakkad burst
into tears soon after he measured the harvest from his five hectare field in
Kainakary gram panchayat in Kerala’s Kuttanad region on March 15.
“These are tears of joy,” said
the 41-year-old, wiping his eyes. “I got 36 tonnes of rice in this puncha
season. This is the first bumper harvest in my life. I can now forget the
sorrows of the floods.”
The puncha, or rabi season,
begins in October and lasts till the end of March.
Alakkad is among thousands of
farmers in Kuttanad who lost their crops, homes and possessions in the floods
that ravaged Kerala in July and August.
During the disaster, Alakkad and
family shifted to a relief camp on higher ground. When he returned home after
20 days, instead of his crop, he found a pile of silt standing in his paddy
fields.
There are about 40,000 farmers in
Kuttanad who cultivate paddy in more than 30,000 hectares. Most of them have
had abundant harvests. Rough estimates by state government officials put the
rice production in the puncha season at two lakh tonnes – 75,000 tonnes higher
than last year’s harvest.
Farmers weigh their paddy harvest in Kainakary, in Kerala’s
Kuttanad. (Photo credit: TA Ameerudheen).
The rice bowl
Known as the rice bowl of Kerala,
Kuttanad is nestled between the foothills of the Western Ghats to the East and
the relatively elevated plains of coastal Alappuzha to the West. It lies below
sea level. Kuttanad usually floods when water levels in four rivers – the
Pampa, Achenkoil, Manimala and Meenachil – rise during the monsoon.
When floods first hit the area in
July, submerging half-grown paddy in the fields, Kuttanad’s farmers were
hopeful that the crop would eventually revive. Those hopes were swept away in
August, when the century’s worst floods wreaked havoc across Kerala, including
Kuttanad.
The bumper harvest can be
attributed to the fertile silt that was dumped in the fields during the twin
floods, said agricultural scientists. “Silt accumulation has increased the soil
fertility,” said Reena Mathew, associate director (in-charge) at the Regional
Agriculture Research Station, Kumarakom. “Besides, decomposed paddy [destroyed
during the floods] became organic manure.”
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Santhosh Kumar, an official at
the agriculture department in Kuttanad, said farmers in the area got up to
eight tonnes of rice per hectare. “This is a record in Kuttanad,” he said.
“Till last year, the maximum yield was six tonnes per hectare.”
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The puncha season is the second
of Kuttanad’s two crop seasons. The first, known as virippu, begins in
February-March and ends in August-September.
Mathew said the fact that
Kuttanad farmers strictly adhered to the traditional crop calendar this year also
contributed to the good yield.
“Farmers often fail to follow the
puncha calendar due to a variety of reasons, including a delay in harvesting
the first crop,” she said. “Everyone followed the calendar this year as the
first crop was destroyed in the floods.”
Labourers load sacks of rice onto
trucks in Kainakary, in Kerala’s Kuttanad, on March 15. (Photo credit: TA
Ameerudheen).
Grim start
The puncha season had started on
a grim note in October, barely three months after the floods, as farmers took
stock of their losses, and cleaned up their farm implements and fields.
Once the water receded,
padashekhara samithis, or farmers’ collectives, got into the act. They tested
the soil, and found ways to reduce its acidity. They then asked farmers to sow
seeds of the locally-developed Uma rice variety.
“I was worried in the beginning,”
said AR Soman, 52, a farmer in Kainakary. “But the good start boosted my
confidence.” Soman is a member of the Umbakkattussery Padashekhara Samithi. He
said he had told his friends to prepare for a bumper harvest in January itself.
News reports quoted officials of
the Kerala Civil Supplies Corporation, a state government enterprise that
procures rice, as saying that the corporation was expected to procure two lakh tonnes of paddy at the end of the season,
80,000 tonnes more than the previous season.
Uneven harvest
The harvest has, however, been
uneven across Kuttanad’s six agronomic zones.
Farmers in lower Kuttanad, which
is prone to moderate flooding, got the highest yield as compared to upper
Kuttanad (which lies closer to the uplands), kayal lands (in the vicinity of the
Vembanad Lake), north Kuttanad (the deltaic formation of the Meenachil river),
Kari lands (which come under the west southern side and the northern side of
the deltaic formation) and Purakkad (which lies at the western side of upper
Kuttanad).
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Kainakary gram panchayat lies in
lower Kuttanad.
“Farmers in lower Kuttanad got
the best harvest,” said an agriculture department official on condition of
anonymity. “Pest attack posed a big threat to farmers in upper Kuttanad,” he
said.
In February, an agriculture labourer died in Peringara gram panchayat in
upper Kuttanad due to pesticide poisoning.
Time to pay off debt
With the profit earned from their
puncha crop, farmers here are planning to renovate their damaged homes and
repay their debts.
Soman said his house needs urgent
repairs before monsoon. “I will start work soon,” he said.
Alakkad is keen on repaying his
creditors. “I had borrowed money to rebuild my house after the floods,” he
said. So I will start paying it off soon. I want to be debt-free as early as
possible.”
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Innovative seed grant program to fund
collaborative biomedical research for 10 years
By riceuniversity | March 29, 2019
HOUSTON – (March 27, 2019) – The
Houston-based John S. Dunn Foundation in stepping up to provide a decade of
innovation funding that will allow Texas Medical Center (TMC) researchers to
pursue ambitious projects that improve lives by better understanding and
treating life-threatening diseases and health conditions.
The Gulf Coast Consortia (GCC), a
Houston organization whose members include many of the TMC’s leading research
institutions, today announced the John S. Dunn Collaborative Research Award
Program, a 10-year effort to provide seed grants for innovative research that
accelerates basic and translational discoveries in the quantitative biomedical
sciences in the Houston-Galveston area.
The program, which will be
administered by GCC, will provide three seed grants of up to $100,000 per year
for exploratory, high-risk projects that have the potential to improve
healthcare outcomes and attract additional research dollars. The Dunn grants
are restricted to collaborations between researchers from GCC member
institutions who have not previously worked together. GCC members include
Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, University of Houston, The
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston The University of Texas
Medical Branch at Galveston, Institute of Biosciences and Technology of the
Texas A&M Health Science Center and The University of Texas MD Anderson
Cancer Center.
The new program builds upon an
earlier, 10-year effort launched by the foundation and GCC in 2009 that awarded
$3,502,000 to 36 research teams, representing 78 faculty across all seven GCC
member institutions. The newly formed teams collaborated on research in a
variety of biomedical health areas including aging and longevity, Alzheimer’s
disease, antimicrobial resistance, brain injuries and diseases, cancer
detection, treatment and therapeutics, gene therapy, gut microbiome health,
hearing loss, heart defects and disease, life-threatening gastroenteritis, and
wound healing. Faculty participating in this research through 2018 have
subsequently garnered 62 competitively funded research grants totaling $42.5
million, a 13-fold increase over the initial Dunn funding.
The Dunn Foundation is a longtime
supporter of collaborative research through the GCC, which builds
interdisciplinary research teams and training programs in the biomedical
sciences that involve the quantitative, chemical, mathematical, engineering and
physical sciences.
Gulf Coast Consortia:
Founded in 1990 and located in
Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative, GCC is a collaboration of basic and
translational scientists, researchers, clinicians and students in the
quantitative biomedical sciences who help advance the region’s scientific
progress through participation in joint training and research programs,
utilization of shared equipment and core facilities, and the exchange of
scientific knowledge.
Integrating
innovation with national development
Sunday, 31 March 2019 | Renu Swarup
Biotechnology in India has had an exhilarating journey from
research to translation. However, the next most important task is to ensure its
sustainability and scalability
The future standard of living,
economic growth and societal progress are largely dependent on the ability to
innovate. In the words of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it is time to redefine
research and development as “research for development” of the nation. The Prime
Minister has ubiquitously reaffirmed his belief that it is prudent and
imperative to reach the lowest rung of the pyramid through science and
technology.
Established in 1986, the Department
of Biotechnology has been a catalyst in spearheading innovative solutions for
developmental challenges. Biotechnology as a field has been defined in simple
words as “The use of biological processes, organisms, or systems to manufacture
products intended to improve the quality of human life”. As the field has
progressed, the Department of Biotechnology has made significant strides and
aided in the economic and social growth of the country.
From research spanning prevention
and cure for major diseases, to addressing the challenges of improved
agriculture productivity, to developing innovative solutions for national
nutrition needs and a clean environment, the Department is leading the way for
pathbreaking biotechnological research.
Over the last three decades, the
Department of Biotechnology has created a very strong research and translation
ecosystem across the country and built strong foundations, leveraging the
strength of national and international partnerships. With more than 15,000
scientists and 800 institutes and laboratories supported, today nearly 10,000
biotechnology research fellows and students are supported annually. World-class
state-of-the-art infrastructure has been created, which through the Department
of Biotechnology’s SAHAJ scheme has now been made accessible to all researchers
and start-up to take research and innovation to the furthest corner of the
country. Skill Vigyan Life Science and biotechnology centres help build an
employable skilled human resource base.
The Department has also made
significant contributions to the growth of the nation by aligning its work to
the national growth agenda and developing innovative solutions for the national
missions of Swasth Bharat, Ayushman Bharat, Swachchh Bharat, Poshan Abhiyan,
Start-up India, Make in India, and Skill India.
Scientists from academia and
industry have successfully delivered to the country climate resilient and
disease and pest resistant varieties of rice, wheat and maize. Other
achievement includes the first technology for fortified rice, the first
indigenous Rotavirus vaccine which is now in the universal immunisation
programme and the first technology for 2G Ethanol from agriculture waste that
is now being scaled up in a commercial refinery. More than 1,000 start-ups and
entrepreneurs under BIRAC and the Department of Biotechnology’s SIB programme
have developed affordable products, including low cost devices, implants and
diagnostics for healthcare.
To take scientific research from
the laboratory to the end user, the Department of Biotechnology has built an
ecosystem which allows for seamless movement of research through translation
phase to commercialisation. 16 institutions, 4 bio-clusters, 2 public sector
undertakings and over 5,000 extramural research projects contribute to this. We
have seen a growing transition over these years moving from single investigator
to multi investigator projects, from single institute to multi institute
projects, from only academia research to industry-academia innovation research
and translation. New institutional partnership and governance models have
emerged.
Priority missions on
antimicrobial resistance (AMR), clean energy, genomics and big data, vaccines,
biotic and abiotic stress resistant and nutritionally enriched crop variety
development and the National Biopharma Mission are important initiatives,
contributing to move the biotechnology growth trajectory forward. Integration
of new and emerging technologies, linking biological science with data science,
with clinical research, with engineering sciences, is the way forward in
preparation of meeting our ambitious target of achieving a USD 100 billion
bio-economy by 2025.
The Department of Biotechnology
has also been a key in forging strategic international alliances to promote
knowledge sharing and discovery, with more than 25 active partnerships which
bring in a commitment of scientific collaboration, researcher mobility and
collective efforts to address common national and global challenges
As we move forward, our challenge
is not just to strengthen the research and translation base but to ensure
sustainability and scalability. The Department has consistently brought to the
fore the importance of science in all walks of life and has integrated
innovation with national development. The Department of Biotechnology has
promoted science and technology as a way of thinking and envisions to continue
to do so and be a critical part of India’s growth story.
(The writer is Secretary,
Department of Biotechnology, Government of India)
Meet the mini frogs of Madagascar—the
new species we’ve discovered
Miniaturized frogs form a fascinating but
poorly understood group of amphibians. They have been exceptionally prone to
taxonomic underestimation because when frogs evolve small body size they start
to look remarkably similar – so it is easy to underestimate how diverse they
really are.
As part of my PhD I have been studying frogs
and reptiles on Madagascar, an island in the Indian Ocean that’s a little
larger than mainland France. It has more than 350 frog species, giving it
possibly the highest frog diversity per square kilometre of any country in the
world. And many of these frogs are very small.
We have added to the knowledge of these tiny
species by describingfive
new species as belonging to the group of frogs commonly referred to as
“narrow-mouthed” frogs. The largest of them could sit happily on your
thumbnail. The smallest is just longer than a grain of rice.
What’s remarkable is the smallest frogs have
evolved to become tiny again and again, often several times within a single
region.
We’ve dubbed three of the new species as “Mini”
– a group that is wholly new to science. When a whole group or “genus” like
this is new to science, it needs a name, so that information about it can be
accumulated with a fixed anchor. We also wanted to have a bit of fun. And so,
we named the species Mini mum, Mini
scule, and Mini ature. Adults of the two
smallest species – Mini mum and Mini
scule – are 8–11 mm, and even the largest member of the
genus, Mini ature, at 15 mm, could sit on
your thumbnail with room to spare.
The other two new species, Rhombophryne
proportionalis and Anodonthyla eximia, are also just
11–12 mm, and are much smaller than their closest relatives.
The frogs we identified belong to three
different groups that are not closely related to one another, and they have
independently evolved to be much smaller in body size.
Our findings tell us that the evolution of body
size in Madagascar’s miniature frogs has been more dynamic than previously
understood. And future studies will hopefully shed light on the interplay
between the ecology and evolution of these remarkably diverse frogs.
Tiny
frogs
The “narrow-mouthed” frog species is part of a
highly diverse family found on every continent except Antarctica and Europe.
But the frogs we found on the island belong to the subfamily Cophylinae which
is endemic to Madagascar. The subfamily has a particularly large diversity of
miniaturised species which, based on their small size, were historically
attributed to the single genus Stumpffa.
Although most narrow-mouthed frogs are small to
moderately large, many are tiny, including the smallest frog in the
world, Paedophryne amauensis from
Papua New Guinea. It’s adult body size is 7.7 mm. That’s about the length of
your average Tic Tac sweet.
What’s remarkable is that the smallest frogs
have evolved to become tiny again and again, often several times within a
single region, as highlighted in this new study. This means there must be some
kind of advantage to being a tiny frog or something that allows tiny frogs to
survive, thrive, and diversify.
What
we found
Mini mum is from Manombo in eastern Madagascar. It
is one of the smallest frogs in the world, reaching an adult body size of 9.7
mm in males and 11.3 mm in females. It could sit on a thumbtack.
ANDOLALAO RAKOTOARISON
Mini mum lives in the leaf litter in the
fragmented lowland forest along Madagascar’s east coast.
Mini scule from Sainte Luce in southeastern
Madagascar is slightly larger and has teeth in its upper jaw.
Mini ature from Andohahela in southeast Madagascar
is larger than its relatives but is similar in build.
Rhombophryne proportionalis from
Tsaratanana in northern Madagascar is unique among Madagascar’s miniaturised
frogs because it’s a proportional dwarf, meaning it has the proportions of a
large frog, but is only about 12 mm long. This is very unusual among tiny
frogs, which usually have large eyes, big heads, and other characters that are
“baby-like”; so-called “paedomorphisms”.
Anodonthyla eximia from
Ranomafana in eastern Madagascar is distinctly smaller than any other Anodonthyla species.
It lives on the ground, providing evidence that miniaturisation and
terrestriality may have an evolutionary link. Maybe getting really small makes
it hard to stay up in the trees.
Finding
frogs
Finding tiny frogs in the leaf litter is hard
work. We often spend months in the forest, under very difficult conditions,
trying to find frogs and reptiles. Because of their size, the tiny frogs are
exceptionally hard to find so the trick is to listen for their calls, and then
track them.
But calling males often sit one or two leaves
deep and stop calling at the slightest disturbance. When you eventually find a
frog, you record its call and then try to catch it – a very tough exercise.
Then there are other challenges. Cyclones often
batter Madagascar’s eastern coast in the December–March rainy season, which can
make searching even more difficult. We found Anodonthyla eximia in the
early morning after a terrible night, when a cyclone swept away most of the
camp. Miserable conditions for biologists can make great conditions for frogs.
Madagascar is a treasure trove of biodiversity.
We already know hundreds of species of reptiles and amphibians from the island
and, because we have DNA information on a lot of species that are not yet
named, we also have a sense for how much we don’t know about that
diversity.
It is one of the best places in the world to
study reptiles and amphibians and their evolutionary processes. But we are
aware that we’re working in a very tight time frame. Madagascar’s forests are
dwindling at an astounding rate. It is one of the poorest
countries, and with growing populations, the forests bear the brunt of human
needs. Conservation work in the country is intensifying, but there is still a
long way to go before we can consider species like Mini mumand Mini
scule safe for the foreseeable future.
Mark
D Scherz, PhD candidate, Technical
University Braunschweig
This article is republished from The Conversation under a
Creative Commons license. Read the original
article.
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Native rice on menu for CDU
researchers
Dr Sean Bellairs and Dr Penny
Wurm will lead the native rice project
Charles Darwin University (CDU)
has been successful in its bid, as part of a consortium with five other
universities, for $35 million in national funding to develop Darwin and other
regional centres as major agri-food hubs.The Australian Government recently
agreed to fund the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), which
is expected to include a $1.8 million project for CDU to develop commercially
viable native rice as an agri-business.CDU Research Institute for the
Environments and Livelihoods (RIEL) researchers Dr Sean Bellairs and Dr Penny
Wurm said the expected value of the CDU native rice project would be more than
$200,000 in funding a year for the next decade.
“It’s very exciting as now that
we have the support, we could potentially put Darwin on the map as a major
producer of a range of native rice,” Dr Sean Bellairs said.
He said that RIEL also would
undertake further research on how to protect the rice while propagating it in
the wetlands.
“The NT Government’s Department
of Primary Industry and Resources will also be providing invaluable support
with their expertise and use of their propagation facilities,” he said.
Dr Wurm said the project aimed to
produce the rice on land near Fogg Dam owned by Pudakul Aboriginal Cultural
Tours, a long-term partner with CDU researchers.
“Pudakul Aboriginal Cultural
Tours are very popular with tourists wanting to experience Aboriginal culture
and produce,” she said.
“They have suitable land to use
and hope to feature the rice on their menus and at the visitor centre.”
Dr Bellairs said the CRC was a
collaborative program for projects that worked across the food supply chain and
incorporated innovations in protected cropping, advanced manufacturing, smart
logistics, and food science to underpin high-value industries in agri-food hubs
across Australia.
China develops new rice strain with high yield, disease resistance
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-01
16:33:59|Editor: Yurou
NANJING, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have bred a new
strain of rice with both high disease resistance and high yield, Nanjing
Agricultural University (NAU) announced.
A research team led by Professor Yang Donglei of the State Key
Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement and NAU in eastern
China's Jiangsu Province, utilized a high-yield gene, coded Ideal Plant
Architecture1 (IPA1), to enhance the plant's disease resistance against the
bacterial blight of rice without undermining yields.
Yang's team found that downregulation of miR-156 and
overexpression of IPA1, a target gene of microRNA-156 (miR-156) that has access
to the regulation of multiple processes in the grain's growth and development,
would improve disease resistance but reduce rice yield.
To find a way out of the dilemma, researchers set an
"alarm" on the novel strain of rice to signal bacterial blight
invasion and thus raised expression of IPA1 to enhance disease resistance.
"We call the new strain of rice 'HIP,'" Yang said,
noting that the team has identified miR-156-IPA1 as a regulator of the
crosstalk between growth and defense and bred the new strain of rice.
Further research showed that without pathogenic infection, IPA1
expression of the new plant strain only increases slightly, which enhances
yield-related traits including fewer tiller buds, larger spikes and thick
stems.
The research findings were published in the latest issue of
Nature Plants, one of the top international academic journals on plant biology.
www..com/english/2019-04/01/c_137940688.htm
Proved by science: Winston Churchill,
not nature, caused 1943 Bengal famine
Researchers studied simulated soil conditions from 1870 to 2016, and
found that while other famines during this period were caused by drought, the
one in 1943 wasn’t.
Winston Churchill | Commons
Bengaluru: Indians have been claiming it for decades, but now they have
science to offer as further evidence. The 1943 Bengal famine that caused the
death of over 30 lakh people in British India was caused by the then-British
Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s policies, and not a drought.
The study, published
in the journal Geophysical Research Letters was conducted by researchers from
IIT-Gandhinagar, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Indian
Meteorological department.
They studied simulated soil
conditions from 1870 to 2016, and concluded that while all the other famines
during this period were caused by drought, the one in 1943 wasn’t.
Over the past century and a half,
India has experienced seven major drought periods: 1876-1882, 1895-1900,
1908-1924, 1937-1945, 1982-1990, 1997-2004, and 2011-2015. During these times,
India experienced six major famines, in the years 1873-74, 1876, 1877, 1896-97,
1899, and 1943.
The study
The team analysed the causes of
these famines using historical weather and soil
data. They found that the first five famines were accompanied by
indicators of droughts, mainly low soil moisture. They concluded that the 1943
famine was caused due to policy failures alone and no natural causes.
A loss in soil moisture leads to
failure of crops, thus setting the stage for famines, which are prolonged
periods of food shortage in a given area.
Though India suffered a drought
period from 1937-1945, the worst of it was reportedly experienced in 1941.
According to the researchers, there
was abundant rain during the 1943 famine.
“The Bengal famine of 1943 was
completely because of policy failure,” Vimal Mishra, the lead author of the
study, told CNN. Such
policies included not the large-scale export of rice, and prioritizing vital
supplies for soldiers engaged in the Second World War.
“There have been no major famines
since independence,” said Mishra. “And so we started our research thinking the
famines would have been caused by drought due to factors such as lack of
irrigation.”
Acknowledging that the role of
agriculture remains undefined in famines, Mishra and his team set out to study
the state of agriculture in the country during these periods of famine.
Using station‐based historical observations and
simulations from a computer fed with a hydrological model, the researchers were
able to reconstruct and determine the link between famines and droughts in
India. Moisture depletion showed a clear pattern of hampering food production
for all famines except in 1943.
Churchill’s policies
Other studies and investigations
have also pointed to the famine’s origins in the unfair policies of Churchill,
who is widely celebrated in the West for his leadership of Britain during the
Second World War.
Journalist Madhushree Mukerjee, in
her book Churchill’s Secret War, noted the policies that enabled the famine.
Japan, an Axis power fighting the
British-led Allied nations, had an active naval presence in the waters of the
Bay of Bengal in the early 1940s, and had annexed Burma (now Myanmar) in 1942.
Churchill diverted large supplies of crops and rice, using thousands of boats,
from the coastal areas to deny supplies to the Japanese forces should they
invade India.
This was a part of Britain’s
1942 “Denial Policies”.
Fearing a Japanese invasion via Burma, the British Raj set about devising a
double attack. First, rice was denied to districts along the southern coast of
Bay of Bengal, which typically have a surplus of rice. John Herbert, the
then-governor of Bengal, directed rice and paddy to be removed or destroyed in
these cities immediately.
The second part of the directive
was to deny boats and other forms of transport. All boats that were large
enough to carry more than 10 people (and crops) were destroyed, disrupting
distribution of food.
As Mukherjee notes, over 46,000
boats were destroyed, and the scale of damage led to a near-complete breakdown
of transportation infrastructure.
Indians ‘breed like rabbits’
The areas that constitute
modern-day Bihar were ravished by a famine a few decades prior, in 1873. At the
time, the lieutenant-governor of the Bengal Presidency, Sir Richard Temple,
acted swiftly, importing half a million tonnes of rice from neighbouring Burma.
As a result, the mortality was very
low and millions of lives were saved. However, Temple was castigated by the
British government for being too extravagant. He was transferred to Madras
during the famine of 1877, with the British Raj implementing “less expensive”
policies for mitigation. As a result, millions died.
However, the British were unmoved.
When British officials pointed out to Churchill that millions of Indians were
dying in the famine, he reportedly asked,
“Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?” He has also been quoted as saying that the famine
was Indians’ own fault “for breeding like rabbits”.
Meanwhile, several high-ranking
British officers, including the governor of Bengal John Herbert, governor-general
and viceroy of India, Linlithgow, the secretary of state for India, Leo Amery,
commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, General Auchinleck, and the then supreme
commander of south-east Asia, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, had been making urgent
requests to London for emergency import of rice and wheat.
Churchill’s cabinet denied the
requests, according to Famine, by
Cormac O’Grada and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen.
In fact, Sen stated that the rice
supply in 1943 was in surplus as compared to 1941, which saw no famine. The
recent study supports this data.
As Mishra notes, India has rarely
seen famines since independence, thanks to efficient irrigation practices,
strong distribution systems, better transport, efficient stocking, and improved
seed yields.
Check out My543, our comprehensive report card of all Lok Sabha
MPs.
Pakistan and Malaysia Relations — New
Impetus
MARCH
31, 2019
Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahatir Mohamad was on a three days
historic visit to Pakistan for not only gracing Pakistan Day as “Guest of
Honor” but also to explore endless possibilities for Malaysia and Pakistan to
build further the relations on solid footings. Dr. Mahatir was also given
Pakistan’s highest civil award-Nishan-e-Pakistan for his outstanding
contribution as a strong leader for the Muslim world and enhancing
Pakistan-Malaysian relations to the level of friendship that both countries
enjoy today.
During the visit, Pakistan and Malaysia signed Memorandum of
Understanding on five important different projects, Joint Ventures and Trade
agreements wherein Malaysia intends to purchase state of the art JF-17, a
fighter Jet, rice and Halal meat from Pakistan. Conversely, Malaysia signed
worth $900 million deals in telecom and information technology in which both
countries would cooperate over the coming years. A Joint Venture of Proton
Motors of Malaysia and Pakistan’s Al-Haj group is agreed leading to the
production of Proton car in Pakistan which remains the center piece of this
landmark visit of Dr. Mahathir Muhammad. It is worth mentioning here that Prime
Minister of Malaysia gifted a car manufactured by Proton Motors to Prime
Minister of Pakistan Mr. Imran Khan. Moreover, both of the countries agreed to
open branches of their leading banks in each other countries. Pakistan
perceives the success of this visit as a gateway to ASEAN countries for more
diverse trade markets such as Singapore and Thailand.
Keeping in view the significance of the age of the
interdependence, states are operating in multilateral international system with
convergences of interests in lined with the emerging trends in the global
milieu. Pakistan and Malaysia are no exception with having potential to be a
trading partner and likely to engage more in a time to come but their true
potential lies in multilateral trade relationship across the ASEAN.
Geographically, SAARC lies in direct proximity with ASEAN which highlights the
potential of intra-regional trade but unfortunate inactiveness of SAARC is
major hindrance. The SCO is another regional organization in the backyard of
ASEAN, which if combined with SAARC, constitutes whole continent of Asia. The emerging
Asian economic philosophy is multilateralism whereas its potential lies in
close partnership and cooperation. The states should engage with each other at
regional level to fully exploit the trade potential and collective benefits.
The joint communiqué of both the
leaders holds significance in its own diplomatic protocols and the message it
conveys to the rest of the world. It is critical when Pakistan is facilitating
Afghan Peace Process. It is an eye-opener for the US when it expressed its
intentions to recognize Golan Heights of Syria under jurisdiction of Israel
Moreover, Imran Khan appreciates Malaysia the way it has
transformed and fought against the menace of corruption and how Malaysia
tackled economic crisis in Southeast Asia in 1998. It is the time, when
Pakistan is facing economic problems and menace of corruption as well to tackle
the way Malaysia did. Both Malaysia and Pakistan with having the potential can
dominate the global world politics. A significant political fact on the Asian
horizon manifests that Malaysia and Pakistan both are partnered with China in
Belt and Road Initiative at the epicenter of Pacific and Indian Ocean, a major
maritime transit route.
The joint communiqué of both the leaders holds significance in
its own diplomatic protocols and the message it conveys to the rest of the
world. It is critical when Pakistan is facilitating Afghan Peace Process. It is
an eye-opener for the US when it expressed its intentions to recognize Golan
Heights of Syria under jurisdiction of Israel. It is a sense of realization in
Muslim world when Muslims are victims of terrorism by a group of white
supremacists and no one speaks while a violent act by single Muslim is blamed
to whole 1.3 billion Muslims. There is also need to uplift the Muslim world
with the power of knowledge and source of science and technology. Both Pakistan
and Malaysia can practically play this important role. This historic visit
could be a consoling and binding force for the Muslims with a potential to
bridge the gaps between East Asia, South Asia and in extension Middle East. The
political clout of this visit is equally significant as its economic dividends.
The Foreign Direct Investment by Malaysia is part of Imran
Khan’s effort to attract and boost investment in Pakistan to overcome current
account deficits and balance of payment squeeze. In addition to it, the
production sites will facilitate Pakistani youth for employment opportunities,
what the government has promised. Apart from Malaysia, Pakistan bagged billions
of dollars in credit and investments including China, Saudi Arabia, United Arab
Emirates and Qatar.
It is the right time to invest in Pakistan as Pakistan is
opening up its economy, easing visa regime including E-Visa and visa on arrival
applicable to multiple entries. This move is intended to boost economic
activity, seek investments and promote tourism in Pakistan. To achieve this
end, Pakistan and Malaysia signed a Memorandum of Understanding to partially
abolish visa requirements on Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to Kula Lumpur,
Malaysia. Pakistan is also interested in knowledge of Malaysia regarding
tourism to revive local tourism industry of Pakistan. Mr. Imran Khan has
publicly acknowledging the progress of tourism industry in Malaysia and vowed
to bring Pakistan at par with advanced tourism destinations including Malaysia
and Turkey. Both states have immense potential and this can be effectively
utilized in the near future.
The writer is Director, Instituted of Peace and Diplomatic
Studies
Street Hawker Who Rose to Run Ksh100M Company
·
By on 30 March
2019 - 4:12 pm
They say that hard work and
perseverance pays and there is no better person prove that fact quite like
Edwin Kagombe.
Roughly 20 years ago, Kagobe recalls being a
desperate rice hawker from Ngurubani town in Mwea,
Kirinyaga County who sold the commodity from village to village. At the time,
the sector was still controlled by the government.
“Hawking along the dusty streets
of Ngurubani town was not easy but since I was aiming for the skies, I
soldiered on,” he told The Standard.
At the time, the government,
through the National Irrigation Board (NIB) had pegged the price of paddy
rice at Ksh30. Kagombe would mill it and hawk at Ksh75.
With time fortunately, the
government liberalised the industry and allowed other people who had the chance
to produce the commodity in large scale, including Kagombe, rise to the
occasion.
Edwin Kagombe holds some of the riced milled at Tai Rice
Millers. (Photo/ The Standard)
Taking advantage of the
opportunity, he established himself as an authority in the business and now
runs a rice mill, Tai Rice Mill, valued at Ksh100 million.
He further divulged that he has
employed a staff of 20 people who work at the miller that produces 30
tonnes per day and is housed by a godown.
To get to the top, however, came
with it challenges including the time when public servants would stop to buy
his products but then speed away without paying.
He also revealed that it was a
challenge securing a financier at the time when he was setting up the company
since they wanted some collateral.
“If one has the finances and
wants high quality mills, I would recommend machines from Britain and Germany
but if you just want something functional at an affordable cost, China is the
place to go,” he continued while revealing that he bought his machine from
China.
He disclosed that he made the
purchase from the Asian country since their machines are relatively cheaper.
Rice millers equivalent to that of Kagombe in the European nations of Britain
and Germany are valued at Ksh350 million.
He still faces challenges
especially with the rampant importation of cheap Pakistani rice that is mixed
with genuine Mwea's and sold off to unsuspecting customers.
“The cheap Pakistan grain is
dumped into a big store in Mwea always after every harvesting season since the
sector was liberalised in 1998.
“The adulteration of the pure
Mwea pishori with cheap imports has affected business and now consumers have
become extra cautious,” he stated.
Rice farmers at Mwea Irrigation Scheme.
Idai still to exact toll in food,
jobs, transport
Regional
economies will take a knock from deadly cyclone
31 March 2019 - 07:48
Tropical Cyclone Idai, which hit
the coastline of Mozambique on March 14, caused heavy loss of life and affected
more than 600,000 people - a number that could rise after on-ground
assessments. Amid continuing efforts to find survivors, two key concerns have
come to the fore: the impact on food security, and the broader impact on the
Mozambican economy.
The UN estimates that more than
500,000ha of crops were destroyed by the cyclone, just before harvest season.
Mozambique is a net importer of major grains such as maize, wheat and rice. In
a normal season, the country imports about 100,000t of maize, 700,000t of rice
and 680,000t of wheat to fulfil its domestic needs.
Maize imports are largely
transported by land as these are mainly from SA and Zambia. Wheat and rice
imports originate from Europe and Asia through Beira's port, the area affected
by the cyclone. In the case of rice, the key suppliers are typically Thailand,
Pakistan, Vietnam, and China.
Vietnam and China are expecting
an uptick in 2018/2019 rice production, which means there will be fairly large
supplies on the global market.
In terms of wheat, Russia,
Germany, Canada, Lithuania and Poland are generally the leading suppliers to
Mozambique. Some of these countries could experience a decline in the wheat
harvest in the 2018/2019 production season, but there will still be sufficient
supplies in the global market.
Given that Mozambique's
production of rice and wheat is relatively negligible, and the country
predominantly depends on imports, the devastation from the cyclone will not
lead to significant changes in import requirements for these two commodities.
However, there could be logistical challenges due to the damage to port
infrastructure.
In the case of maize,
Mozambique's imports could more than double to more than 200,000t in the 2018/2019
season due to lower domestic production. At this juncture, we do not have the
exact figures. We will have a better sense as soon as we are aware of the scale
of crop damage.
This means that there will be
increased pressure on Southern African maize supplies this year.
After all, even the key
maize-producing countries in the region - SA and Zambia - are expecting
double-digit declines in the harvest in the 2018/2019 season.
This does not mean there will not
be room for maize exports to Mozambique from the region, but prices will be
higher, which will contribute to increased food insecurity in Mozambique.
Beyond food security, agriculture
contributes about 22% of GDP in Mozambique, with cotton, cassava, sugarcane and
tobacco being its main export crops. The sector accounts for almost 80% of the
labour force.
Needless to say, a substantial
portion of national output as well as jobs will be affected by the cyclone.
Shattered homes in Beira appear
to float like boats in the floodwaters from Cyclone Idai which devastated the
city and towns in northern Mozambique two weeks ago. Picture: AFP
Real GDP growth for 2018 was
recorded at 3.5%, against an average of 7% between 2004 and 2015, according to
data from the African Development Bank Group. This deceleration was largely due
to a decrease in public investment, coupled with a 23% decrease in foreign
direct investment.
The ports and logistics corridors
in Mozambique have become a key feature in aiding economic activity in the
country.
Mozambique borders Malawi,
Swaziland, Tanzania, SA, Zambia and Zimbabwe by land and the Comoros and
Madagascar by sea, and accounted for 70% of goods in transit in the Southern
African Development Community (Sadc) region.
The UN estimates an approximate
$1bn (R14.6bn) worth of infrastructure to have been damaged by the cyclone.
Beira is the fourth-largest city
in Mozambique by population and the second-largest by GDP after Maputo.
Economic activity in Beira has
picked up over time on the back of significant investment in its roads, rail
and ports. Before the cyclone, Beira port handled 60% of the country's imports
and 40% of its exports. It is home to the country's longest railway system.
The other Sadc countries are also
most certainly going to feel the effects of the cyclone on their economies.
SA, which imports about 1,000MW
of electricity from the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric system in Mozambique, faced
severe electricity shortages at the peak of the cyclone and found itself
plunged into darkness for hours on end.
Goldman Sachs estimates that the
electricity outages in SA will reduce first-quarter GDP by 0.3 of a percentage
point. That is significant, given that SA grew at only 0.8% for the full year
of 2018.
The cyclone also moved on into
Zimbabwe and Malawi, and those economies are expected to experience some
contraction as a result, though the scale is unclear at this stage.
When one takes into account all
the economic activity taking place in Beira, the effects of the cyclone will
most certainly leave great disarray, both economically and in the livelihoods
of the Mozambican citizens who now find their food security at even more risk.
Jobs in the highly
labour-absorptive agricultural industry will be at risk as the sector tries to
rebuild, and household consumption will also feel the pinch on the back of an
expected uptick in food-price inflation and lower disposable household incomes.
Pray for Mozambique, Zimbabwe and
Malawi.
Sihlobo is chief economist of the
Agricultural Business Chamber of SA. Skenjana is a financial economist and
founder of Afra Consultants
China develops new rice strain with high yield, disease resistance
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-01
16:33:59|Editor: Yurou
NANJING, April 1 (Xinhua) -- Chinese scientists have bred a new
strain of rice with both high disease resistance and high yield, Nanjing
Agricultural University (NAU) announced.
A research team led by Professor Yang Donglei of the State Key
Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement and NAU in eastern
China's Jiangsu Province, utilized a high-yield gene, coded Ideal Plant
Architecture1 (IPA1), to enhance the plant's disease resistance against the
bacterial blight of rice without undermining yields.
Yang's team found that downregulation of miR-156 and overexpression
of IPA1, a target gene of microRNA-156 (miR-156) that has access to the
regulation of multiple processes in the grain's growth and development, would
improve disease resistance but reduce rice yield.
To find a way out of the dilemma, researchers set an
"alarm" on the novel strain of rice to signal bacterial blight
invasion and thus raised expression of IPA1 to enhance disease resistance.
"We call the new strain of rice 'HIP,'" Yang said,
noting that the team has identified miR-156-IPA1 as a regulator of the
crosstalk between growth and defense and bred the new strain of rice.
Further research showed that without pathogenic infection, IPA1
expression of the new plant strain only increases slightly, which enhances
yield-related traits including fewer tiller buds, larger spikes and thick
stems.
The research findings were published in the latest issue of
Nature Plants, one of the top international academic journals on plant biology.
Pakistan rice hurting our farmers, Waiguru vows to fight cartels
In Summary
• Governor Anne Waiguru says
cartels should be blamed for importing Pakistan rice at the expense of local
farmers.
• The importation she says has negatively affected the local
prices for Mwea rice.
Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru
Commissions Mwea -Makima Water project at Ngurubani town.
COURTESY
COURTESY
Kirinyaga governor Anne Waiguru
has vowed to fight cartels importing Pakistan rice.
Waiguru on Friday said the cartel
led by some well-known traders is secretely importing Pakistan rice at the
expense of local farmers.
She said the importation has for
decades negatively affected Mwea Rice markets.
“Going forward I am going to do
my best to safeguard the interests of local farmers,” she said.
Waiguru was speaking on Friday at
Ngurubani town where she launched Mwea-Makima Water project.
“I also urge our farmers to take
precaution not to elect leaders who protect such self-centered traders whose
aim is to exploit others,” she said.
Waiguru said over 6,000
households in Mwea Sub County will benefit from clean water sourced from
Nyamindi River.
She said the project is part of
her administration’s resolve to ensure Kirinyaga residents are provided with
clean safe water for consumption.
The county boss said the water
will undergo a chlorination process in a 22,500 litre tank before it is
released to the residents.
According to her, the supply line
is served by a 200mm pipe that covers 31km within the county.
The supply will reach residents
of Nyangati, Kimbimbi, Ngurubani and all the way to Wamumu ward.
“We have initiated several
projects in the county through Mountain Cities Vision, which currently ranks
Mwea region as green City,” Waiguru said.
The former Devolution, Youth and
Gender Cabinet Secretary said so far a 30,000 litre distribution tank at
wanguru is complete.
She said two more tanks will be
built in different area to boost supply.
She said amid efforts to create
more employment opportunities for the youth, a rice husk factory will be
set up to convert rice husks to MDF boards.
The governor said the factory
will maximise profits for rice farmers.
"We want to end the culture
of handouts among our youth by initiating sustainable economic
activities," She said.
“This region produces tomatoes in
large scale and thus to add value to the products, my administration is
committed to ensure a tomato cunning factory is set up at Sagana,” she added.
This she said will go a long way
in enhancing markets for the crop.
Madagascar Key Message Update, March 2019
Below average cumulative rainfall recorded in western and
eastern Madagascar
Key Messages
Early rice harvests are ongoing in the central and southern
highlands and production is expected to be near normal in areas that received
normal rainfall. Production is expected to be below average in parts of the
west that received only 25 to 50 percent of normal rainfall. Similarly, poor
rainfall in the east is likely to affect cash crop production (cloves and
litchis). The north continues to receive above normal rain which is favorable
to cash crops like vanilla, which will be harvested in July. Rainfall is expected
to be average in the west and extreme south, above average in the north, and
below average in the east and southwest in April and May 2019.
More than 16,000 MT of rice from
Pakistan arrived at Toamasina port in mid-March as part of government’s order
for the subsidized sales. At the time, imported rice prices were 15 to 30
percent above the five-year average in most markets, but similar or less than
last year at the same time. Since mid-January, prices have remained stable in
most markets and decreased in the south with the return of normal trade flows
once roads recovered from the heavy rains. Local rice prices also remained
stable compared to the previous month and last year, except in the south where
some markets are not well supplied. In main cities, and in the southeast,
staple prices have started to decrease because of new harvests.
In Betioky and Ampanihy districts
in the south, more than 40 people were killed according the BNGRC in flash
floods following heavy rains in late February 2019. At least 400 livestock,
including cattle, goats, sheep and chicken also died as a result. Effects on
crops are still being assessed.
In March, poor and very poor
households in Mahafaly Plain: Cassava, Goats and Cattle (MG 23) are
experiencing Stressed (IPC Phase 2!) acute food insecurity. Most parts of
Androy Semi-Arid Cassava, Maize and Livestock (MG 24) are also in Stressed (IPC
Phase 2!) expect in Beloha where the situation is worse despite the
contribution of humanitarian assistance and is in Crisis (IPC Phase 3!). In the
Southeast: coffee, litchis, cassava (MG 19), and in Rice and lima bean - Tulear
II (MG20), the situation remains stable in Stressed (IPC Phase 2) acute food
insecurity. For other households throughout Madagascar, Minimal (IPC Phase 1)
acute food insecurity is expected.
How I rose from a frustrated rice hawker to mill proprietor
· Munene Kamau 30th Mar 2019
11:32:32 GMT +0300
Entrepreneur Edwin Kagombe shows off some
milled pishori rice at his Tai Rice Mills in Ngurubani town, Mwea .He mills an
average of 30tons per day.PHOTO;Munene Kamau/standardAbout 20 years ago, Edwin Kagombe was an ordinary rice hawker
at Ngurubani town, Mwea, Kirinyaga County.
He used to hawk
rice from village to village in the 90s before the sector was liberalised by
the government.
“Hawking along
the dusty streets of Ngurubani town was not easy but since I was aiming
for the skies, I soldiered on,” he says.
Back then, the
Mwea Irrigation Scheme was managed by the National Irrigation Board (NIB) that
had a big say in the market. Kagombe would buy paddy rice from the farmers at
Sh30 per kilo, mill it then sell at Sh75 per kilo. But years on, things have
changed. Today, he says the cost of a kilo of paddy rice has gone up to Sh70.
SEE ALSO :Rice farmers reap from new technology
The game changer
came when the market was liberalised and NIB no longer had a monopoly.
As things
improved, slowly by slowly Kagombe established himself in the business and now
he is the proud owner of a Sh100 million rice mill —Tai Rice Millers. He also
has a workforce of 20 employees and a godown which houses the mill. But its
been a journey.
Loss after loss
He recalls how
initially he used to make losses whenever a Passenger Service Vehicle would
stop at the town and the passengers would ask to buy pishori rice only for them
to speed off without paying.
To get money for
the mill was not a walk in the park since all the financial institutions he approached
wanted some collateral.
When he finally
got the cash, the farmer, now in his early 60s, bought the machine from China,
though he says Europe has better quality.
“If one has the
finances and wants high quality mills, I would recommend machines from Britain
and Germany but if you just want something functional at an affordable cost,
China is the place to go,” he advises.
The size and the
model of his mill can cost about Sh350 million in Britain and Germany while in
China, it is just Sh100 million. The machine has a milling capacity of 30
metric tonnes a day.
“Yes Chinese
goods might not be durable or high quality but they come in handy for
entrepreneurs like us,” he says.
Though he has
broken even, one of the biggest challenges he still faces is competition from
cheap imports.
“The cheap
Pakistan grain is dumped into a big store in Mwea always after every harvesting
season since the sector was liberalised in 1998,” the trader says.
Afterwards, the
pure Mwea pishori rice is used to blend the Pakistan one and offered to
unsuspecting consumers at a much cheaper cost.
“The
adulteration of the pure Mwea pishori with cheap imports has affected business
and now consumers have become extra cautious,” he says.
Kagombe says it
is a high time local farmers were protected from unfair market competition.
Cheap imports
At Ngurubani
town alone, there 10 major rice mills and about 200 small ones owned by
individuals. On the issue of cheap imports, the government insists the imports
are necessary since Kenya has a huge deficit of the grain. Scheme manager
Innocent Ariemba says since the country is only able to produce about 100,000
metric tonnes of rice against 400,000 metric tonnes national demand.
He has since
asked farmers to redouble their efforts and produce more as the only sure way
of blocking the cheap imports.
Egypt Business Team due in May
Parvez
JabriMarch 30, 2019
LAHORE: Ambassador of Egypt Ahmed
Fadel Yacoub said on Friday that a sector-specific trade delegation from Egypt
would visit Pakistan from May 2 to explore trade and investment opportunities.
Talking to LCCI President Almas
Hyder and Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigal at Lahore Chamber of Commerce
& Industry, he said, “I am here with a simple message that Egypt wants to
do business with Pakistan.”
The ambassador said that
brotherly and historic relations between the two countries should be reflected
in trade as both countries have a lot of potential.
He said that Egypt is importing
rice via Dubai and wants to import this commodity from Pakistan, adding that
Pakistan is a country with over 200 million people and a big market for
Egyptian businessmen.
He said, the bilateral trade
balance does not exceed 200 million dollars a year which does not reflect the
potentials of both countries.
He said that Egypt is a country
with a strong and flourishing economy.
He said both Egypt and Pakistan
enjoy historical relations that date back to even before the establishment of
Pakistan.
The ambassador told that Allama
Iqbal visited Egypt many times.
He said that Pakistani businessmen
want to do business with Egypt would have extra benefits.
He said that Egypt wants to
encourage trade and joint ventures would give priority to imports from
Pakistan.
He invited the Pakistani
businessmen to come Egypt and explore trade and investment opportunities.
He said that improvement in legal
framework to protect the business would also help boost trade and economic
ties.
LCCI President Almas Hyder said
that Lahore Chamber is planning a delegation for Africa to establish new
business contacts.
He said that Egypt Embassy has
always responded positively to any initiatives taken by LCCI like Ambassadors’
Dinner, OIC Conference and Africa Day etc.
Almas Hyder said that close
relations between two countries are not fully reflected in two way trade.
Egypt comes at 40th and 39th
places respectively among the top importing and exporting destinations for
Pakistan.
For exploiting untapped potential
both Egypt and Pakistan need to explore opportunities jointly.
The total size of bilateral trade
came down to dollar 208 million in 2018 which was dollar 231 million in 2017.
Pakistan’s exports showed some
improvement during that tenure by reaching dollar 83 million from dollar 77
million.
It was due to decline in imports
from Egypt to Pakistan which decreased from dollar 154 million to dollar 125
million in last two years.
Pakistan exports woven fabric,
cotton yarn, medicaments and some surgical instruments to Egypt.
The imports from Egypt consist of
sanitary towels, seeds and raw cotton etc.
LCCI President said, Pakistan
being an agricultural economy can supply both semi-processed and processed
foods to Egypt.
In 2018, Egypt imported wheat and
meslin worth dollar 2.6 billion, maize worth dollar 1.7 billion, meat worth
dollar 1 billion and sugar dollar 0.8 billion.
Let Pakistan manage to take some
share in these items. He said that Egypt is considered to be one of the top
destinations in the world for tourists.
Pakistan offers a wide spectrum
of tourism ranging from religious to historical places and ancient civilizations
to modern architecture. “We have utilised only a fraction of the tourism
potential available in our country.
We would like to take benefit of
expertise and techniques adopted by Egyptians to attract maximum foreign
tourists,” he said.
Govt may extend 5% export incentive
on non-basmati rice
By Kaushal Verma
NEW DELHI – The government is expected to extend the 5%
incentive under the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme on non-basmati
rice to boost overseas sales, an official said today.
Rewards under the scheme are payable to the exporter as
percentage of the realised freight-on-board value of the exports.
"The 5% export incentive on (non-basmati) rice lapsed on
Mar 25. The government is mulling to extend the sop. However, a final
decision is yet to be taken," the official said.
Non-basmati rice varieties include husked (brown) rice,
parboiled rice, and broken rice.
The crop from India is uncompetitive in the global market owing
to a high Centre-mandated minimum support price, a strong rupee, and
lower prices of rice from Thailand, Myanmar, and Pakistan, major competitors to
India, the official said.
The Centre had increased the minimum support price for common
grade paddy to 1,750 rupees per 100 kg in 2018-19 from 1,550 rupees in 2017-18,
and for fine grade paddy to 1,770 rupees per 100 kg from 1,590 rupees.
Currently, the price of Indian non-aromatic rice is $356
per tn, and it attracts a premium of $40 per tn.
Exports of non-basmati rice from India plunged 16% on year to
6.1 mln tn during Apr-Jan, according to data from the Agricultural
and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority. End
Edited by Avishek Dutta
Cogencis Tel +91 (11) 4220-1000
Send comments to feedback@cogencis.com
This copy was first published on the Cogencis WorkStation
Egypt business team due in
May: Envoy
By News desk
March 30, 2019
Amraiz Khan
Lahore
Lahore
A sector-specific trade
delegation from Egypt will visit Pakistan from May 02 to explore trade and
investment opportunities.
It was revealed by the Ambassador of Egypt Ahmed Fadel Yacoub while talking to the LCCI President Almas Hyder and Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigal at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Friday. Executive Committee Member Aqib Asif, Jameel A. Naaz and Rehmatullah Javed were also present on the occasion.
“I am here with a simple message that Egypt wants to do business with Pakistan”, the Ambassador said and added that brotherly and historic relations between the two countries should be reflected in trade as both countries have a lot of potential.
He said that Egypt is importing rice via Dubai and wants to import this commodity from Pakistan. He said that Pakistan is a country with over 200 million people and a big market for Egyptian businessmen. He said, the bilateral trade balance does not exceed 200 million dollars a year which does not reflect the potentials of both countries. The ambassador told LCCI that Allama Iqbal visited Egypt many times.
The LCCI President Almas Hyder said that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry is planning a delegation for Africa to establish new business contacts. He said that Egypt Embassy has always responded positively to any initiatives taken by LCCI like Ambassadors’ Dinner, OIC Conference and Africa Day etc.
Almas Hyder said that close relations between two countries are not fully reflected in two way trade. Egypt comes at 40th and 39th places respectively among the top importing and exporting destinations for Pakistan. For exploiting untapped potential both Egypt and Pakistan need to explore opportunities jointly.
The total size of bilateral trade came down to dollar 208 million in 2018 which was dollar 231 million in 2017. Pakistan’s exports showed some improvement during that tenure by reaching dollar 83 million from dollar 77 million. It was due to decline in imports from Egypt to Pakistan which decreased from dollar 154 million to dollar 125 million in last two years. Pakistan exports woven fabric, cotton yarn, medicaments and some surgical instruments to Egypt. The imports from Egypt consist of sanitary towels, seeds and raw cotton etc.
The LCCI President said that Pakistan being an agricultural economy can supply both semi-processed and processed foods to Egypt. In 2018, Egypt imported wheat & meslin worth dollar 2.6 billion, maize worth dollar 1.7 billion, meat worth dollar 1 billion and sugar dollar 0.8 billion. Let Pakistan manage to take some share in these items.
It was revealed by the Ambassador of Egypt Ahmed Fadel Yacoub while talking to the LCCI President Almas Hyder and Vice President Faheem-ur-Rehman Saigal at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry on Friday. Executive Committee Member Aqib Asif, Jameel A. Naaz and Rehmatullah Javed were also present on the occasion.
“I am here with a simple message that Egypt wants to do business with Pakistan”, the Ambassador said and added that brotherly and historic relations between the two countries should be reflected in trade as both countries have a lot of potential.
He said that Egypt is importing rice via Dubai and wants to import this commodity from Pakistan. He said that Pakistan is a country with over 200 million people and a big market for Egyptian businessmen. He said, the bilateral trade balance does not exceed 200 million dollars a year which does not reflect the potentials of both countries. The ambassador told LCCI that Allama Iqbal visited Egypt many times.
The LCCI President Almas Hyder said that the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry is planning a delegation for Africa to establish new business contacts. He said that Egypt Embassy has always responded positively to any initiatives taken by LCCI like Ambassadors’ Dinner, OIC Conference and Africa Day etc.
Almas Hyder said that close relations between two countries are not fully reflected in two way trade. Egypt comes at 40th and 39th places respectively among the top importing and exporting destinations for Pakistan. For exploiting untapped potential both Egypt and Pakistan need to explore opportunities jointly.
The total size of bilateral trade came down to dollar 208 million in 2018 which was dollar 231 million in 2017. Pakistan’s exports showed some improvement during that tenure by reaching dollar 83 million from dollar 77 million. It was due to decline in imports from Egypt to Pakistan which decreased from dollar 154 million to dollar 125 million in last two years. Pakistan exports woven fabric, cotton yarn, medicaments and some surgical instruments to Egypt. The imports from Egypt consist of sanitary towels, seeds and raw cotton etc.
The LCCI President said that Pakistan being an agricultural economy can supply both semi-processed and processed foods to Egypt. In 2018, Egypt imported wheat & meslin worth dollar 2.6 billion, maize worth dollar 1.7 billion, meat worth dollar 1 billion and sugar dollar 0.8 billion. Let Pakistan manage to take some share in these items.
India-Pakistan fighting kills 8 – Tensions ease
Villagers carry casket of a boy,
who was killed by Indian shelling, for funeral prayer at a village in Hatian
Bala, 40 kilometers from Muzafarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, Saturday,
March 2, 2019. Indian and Pakistani soldiers again targeted each other’s posts
and villages along their volatile frontier in disputed Kashmir, killing at some
civilians and wounding few others, officials said. (AP Photo/M.D. Mughal)
SRINAGAR, India, March 2, (AP):
Indian and Pakistani soldiers have again targeted each other’s posts and
villages along their volatile frontier in disputed Kashmir, killing at least
six civilians and two Pakistani troops, officials said Saturday.
But in a sign that tensions
between the nuclear-armed rivals could soon ease, a Pakistani Cabinet minister
said a key train service between Pakistan and neighboring India would resume on
Monday. Tensions have been running high since Indian aircraft crossed into
Pakistan this past Tuesday, carrying out what India called a pre-emptive strike
against militants blamed for a Feb 14 suicide bombing in Indian-controlled
Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops. Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a
fighter jet Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on
Friday in a peace gesture.
Fatalities
Fighting resumed overnight Friday. Pakistan’s military said two of its soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals. It marked the first fatalities for Pakistani troops since Wednesday, when tensions dramatically escalated between the nuclear-armed countries over Kashmir, which is split between them but claimed by both in its entirety.
Fighting resumed overnight Friday. Pakistan’s military said two of its soldiers were killed in an exchange of fire with Indian forces near the Line of Control that separates Kashmir between the rivals. It marked the first fatalities for Pakistani troops since Wednesday, when tensions dramatically escalated between the nuclear-armed countries over Kashmir, which is split between them but claimed by both in its entirety.
Indian police, meanwhile, said
two siblings and their mother were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The
three died after a shell fired by Pakistani soldiers hit their home in the
Poonch region near the Line of Control. The children’s father was critically
wounded.
In Pakistan-controlled Kashmir,
government official Umar Azam said Indian troops with heavy weapons
“indiscriminately targeted border villagers” along the Line of Control, killing
a boy and wounding three other people. He said several homes were destroyed by
Indian shelling. Following a lull lasting a few hours, shelling and firing of
small arms resumed Saturday.
A Pakistani military statement
said two civilians were killed and two others wounded in the fresh fighting.
The Indian army said Pakistani troops attacked Indian posts at several places
along the militarized line. Since tensions escalated following last month’s
suicide attack, world leaders have scrambled to head off an all-out war between
India and Pakistan. The rivals have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir
since their independence from British rule in 1947.
Mediator
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday that Russia had offered to serve as a mediator to ease tensions. He said Pakistan was ready to accept the offer, but he did not know whether India would agree as well. Qureshi also said a top Saudi diplomat would soon visit Pakistan and India. Pakistani officials said China is expected to send an envoy to Pakistan and India this coming week.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Saturday that Russia had offered to serve as a mediator to ease tensions. He said Pakistan was ready to accept the offer, but he did not know whether India would agree as well. Qureshi also said a top Saudi diplomat would soon visit Pakistan and India. Pakistani officials said China is expected to send an envoy to Pakistan and India this coming week.
The current violence marks the
most serious escalation of the long-simmering conflict since 1999, when
Pakistan’s military sent a ground force into Indiancontrolled Kashmir. That
year also saw an Indian fighter jet shoot down a Pakistani naval aircraft,
killing all 16 on board.
The latest wave of tensions began
after the militant group Jaish-e- Mohammad claimed responsibility for the Feb
14 suicide bombing by a Kashmiri militant on Indian paramilitary forces. India
has long accused Pakistan of cultivating such militant groups to attack it.
Pakistan has denied any involvement in the suicide attack.
Pakistan’s minister for railways,
Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, told reporters Saturday that the Samjhauta Express train
service linking the Pakistani city of Lahore with the Indian border town of
Atari would resume on Monday. The service was suspended by Pakistani
authorities this past week.
Thousands of people on both sides
of Kashmir have fled to government-run temporary shelters or relatives’ homes
in safer areas to escape shelling along the frontier, which is marked by razor
wire, watch towers and bunkers amid tangled bushes, forests and fields of rice
and corn.
Experts call for proper ‘Salt Export Policy’ to
regularise trade
-
March 29, 2019
ISLAMABAD: The mining experts Friday called for evolving a comprehensive
annual ‘Salt Export Policy ‘(SEP) to regularize country’s salt trade and to
develop a branding mechanism to sell the commodity in the international market
on competitive prices.
Despite being world’s largest
salt producer, Pakistan drags at number 20 in the exporters’ category, and is
unable to make its place in the lucrative world salt market.
Pakistan produces high-quality
salt; popular in many countries due to its red and pink varieties and was a
preferred choice for use in daily diet. It was also utilized by different
industries including construction, decoration, soap, saloon and health fitness
and beauty industry.
“We need to stop the illegal
trade and evolve proper “Salt export Policy” for regularizing the salt export
and proper branding to sell in the international marker,” a senior official of
Commerce Ministry told APP Friday.
However regretted that the
absence of Global Indication Law (GIL) was a cause of huge loss to the national
economy as Pakistan could not directly export the commodity with its own
branding.
“Illegal regional trade and
absence of GIL was major cause of loss in salt industry,” the official, who
requested not be named.
He said private illegal traders
and exporters were exporting raw salt from the country to regional countries,
especially to India, where it was branded locally and exported as an Indian
produce. The profit that could have been earned by Pakistan, goes to other
countries, he lamented.
Highlighting the chronological
developments, he said that before 2007, salt export was regulated by the
Pakistan Minerals Development Cooperation (PMDC), which was responsible for
maintaining and regulating its prices and exports. However, later it was taken
away from PMDC and handed over to private sector.
“The private sector exporters are
now exploiting the situation and export raw salt to India and other countries
on less and non- regulated price, which has been causing losses to the
country’s economy,” he said.
He said because of this practice
by private companies’ the Pakistani salt was not sold in international market
with its own branding while India was taking full advantage by using its own
brand, as Pakistan lacks the GIL.
He said despite huge reserves,
Pakistan was ranked at 20th place in salt export countries with annual $ 1.7
billion exports despite the fact that it was among largest salt producing
countries.
He said Pakistan had an estimated
700 miles salt range, the largest in the world including those at Khewra,
Warcha and Kalabagh.
He said China, United States,
India and Germany were the largest salt exporter destinations of Pakistan,
however pointed that Pakistan exports only raw salt and other countries sell
the same using their own brand and earning huge foreign exchange.
Meanwhile, an official of the
ministry said that the Intellectual Property Organization (IPO) was in the
process of formulating strict regulations to discourage the illegal branding of
Pakistani products by other countries in international market, particularly its
salt and Basmati rice.
“The IPO is striving to get
approve the Geographical Indication Law (GIL) from the parliament of Pakistan
and if passed, it will restrict all the foreign companies to sell Pakistani
salt and other products using their tag,” he added.
Currently, some countries were
selling Pakistan’s famous Khewra salt with their brand names in different
countries which Pakistan wanted to curtail by making the required international
legislation.
A senior official at IPO said
that a draft of the legislation had been forwarded to the law ministry for
vetting and its onward tabling before the parliament for consideration.
Idai still to exact toll in food,
jobs, transport
Regional
economies will take a knock from deadly cyclone
31 March 2019 - 07:48
Tropical Cyclone Idai, which hit
the coastline of Mozambique on March 14, caused heavy loss of life and affected
more than 600,000 people - a number that could rise after on-ground
assessments. Amid continuing efforts to find survivors, two key concerns have
come to the fore: the impact on food security, and the broader impact on the
Mozambican economy.
The UN estimates that more than
500,000ha of crops were destroyed by the cyclone, just before harvest season.
Mozambique is a net importer of major grains such as maize, wheat and rice. In
a normal season, the country imports about 100,000t of maize, 700,000t of rice
and 680,000t of wheat to fulfil its domestic needs.
Maize imports are largely
transported by land as these are mainly from SA and Zambia. Wheat and rice
imports originate from Europe and Asia through Beira's port, the area affected
by the cyclone. In the case of rice, the key suppliers are typically Thailand,
Pakistan, Vietnam, and China.
Vietnam and China are expecting
an uptick in 2018/2019 rice production, which means there will be fairly large
supplies on the global market.
In terms of wheat, Russia,
Germany, Canada, Lithuania and Poland are generally the leading suppliers to
Mozambique. Some of these countries could experience a decline in the wheat
harvest in the 2018/2019 production season, but there will still be sufficient
supplies in the global market.
Given that Mozambique's
production of rice and wheat is relatively negligible, and the country
predominantly depends on imports, the devastation from the cyclone will not
lead to significant changes in import requirements for these two commodities.
However, there could be logistical challenges due to the damage to port
infrastructure.
In the case of maize,
Mozambique's imports could more than double to more than 200,000t in the
2018/2019 season due to lower domestic production. At this juncture, we do not
have the exact figures. We will have a better sense as soon as we are aware of
the scale of crop damage.
This means that there will be
increased pressure on Southern African maize supplies this year.
After all, even the key
maize-producing countries in the region - SA and Zambia - are expecting
double-digit declines in the harvest in the 2018/2019 season.
This does not mean there will not
be room for maize exports to Mozambique from the region, but prices will be
higher, which will contribute to increased food insecurity in Mozambique.
Beyond food security, agriculture
contributes about 22% of GDP in Mozambique, with cotton, cassava, sugarcane and
tobacco being its main export crops. The sector accounts for almost 80% of the
labour force.
Needless to say, a substantial
portion of national output as well as jobs will be affected by the cyclone.
Shattered homes in Beira appear
to float like boats in the floodwaters from Cyclone Idai which devastated the
city and towns in northern Mozambique two weeks ago. Picture: AFP
Real GDP growth for 2018 was
recorded at 3.5%, against an average of 7% between 2004 and 2015, according to
data from the African Development Bank Group. This deceleration was largely due
to a decrease in public investment, coupled with a 23% decrease in foreign
direct investment.
The ports and logistics corridors
in Mozambique have become a key feature in aiding economic activity in the
country.
Mozambique borders Malawi,
Swaziland, Tanzania, SA, Zambia and Zimbabwe by land and the Comoros and
Madagascar by sea, and accounted for 70% of goods in transit in the Southern
African Development Community (Sadc) region.
The UN estimates an approximate
$1bn (R14.6bn) worth of infrastructure to have been damaged by the cyclone.
Beira is the fourth-largest city
in Mozambique by population and the second-largest by GDP after Maputo.
Economic activity in Beira has
picked up over time on the back of significant investment in its roads, rail
and ports. Before the cyclone, Beira port handled 60% of the country's imports
and 40% of its exports. It is home to the country's longest railway system.
The other Sadc countries are also
most certainly going to feel the effects of the cyclone on their economies.
SA, which imports about 1,000MW
of electricity from the Cahora Bassa hydroelectric system in Mozambique, faced
severe electricity shortages at the peak of the cyclone and found itself
plunged into darkness for hours on end.
Goldman Sachs estimates that the
electricity outages in SA will reduce first-quarter GDP by 0.3 of a percentage
point. That is significant, given that SA grew at only 0.8% for the full year
of 2018.
The cyclone also moved on into
Zimbabwe and Malawi, and those economies are expected to experience some
contraction as a result, though the scale is unclear at this stage.
When one takes into account all
the economic activity taking place in Beira, the effects of the cyclone will
most certainly leave great disarray, both economically and in the livelihoods
of the Mozambican citizens who now find their food security at even more risk.
Jobs in the highly
labour-absorptive agricultural industry will be at risk as the sector tries to
rebuild, and household consumption will also feel the pinch on the back of an
expected uptick in food-price inflation and lower disposable household incomes.
Pray for Mozambique, Zimbabwe and
Malawi.
Sihlobo is chief economist of the
Agricultural Business Chamber of SA. Skenjana is a financial economist and
founder of Afra Consultants
https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2019-03-31-idai-still-to-exact-toll-in-food-jobs-transport/https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2019-03-31-idai-still-to-exact-toll-in-food-jobs-transport/https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/business/2019-03-31-idai-still-to-exact-toll-in-food-jobs-transport/
El Niño unlikely to dent growth this year — NEDA
Czeriza Valencia (The Philippine Star) -
March 31, 2019 - 12:00am
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary
Ernesto Pernia said due to the small contribution of the agriculture sector to
domestic economic output, the effect of the dry spell to overall growth would
also be minimal.
MANILA, Philippines — The
prevailing El Niño will not significantly impact on growth and inflation expectations
this year as agriculture has a minimal contribution to the economy and rice
importation is now liberalized, officials of the National Economic and
Development Authority (NEDA) said.
Socioeconomic Planning Secretary
Ernesto Pernia said due to the small contribution of the agriculture sector to
domestic economic output, the effect of the dry spell to overall growth would
also be minimal.
Owing to its weak growth of only
0.8 percent in 2018, the farm sector contributed only 0.1 percentage point to
gross domestic product (GDP) as opposed to the more robust contribution of 2.3
percentage points of the industry sector and 3.8 percentage points of the
services sector.
In terms of gross value added
(GVA) to GDP, the agriculture sector only has a share of between eight to nine
percent.
“Given the contribution of
agriculture to GDP, the impact will be proportional to that contribution,”
Pernia said in a briefing.
NEDA assistant secretary for
policy and planning Carlos Abad said without interventions in place, the
prevailing dry spell would shave off 0.2 percentage point from growth, which is
already factored into the revised six to seven percent growth expectations by
the economic team for this year.
He noted however, that with
interventions already in place, the effect may be less.
“We also have less thunderstorms
during El Niño and there might be some benefits later on because of this,” said
Abad.
The liberalization of rice
importation is also expected to blunt the inflationary effects of El Niño as
rice supply is expected to remain stable, Pernia said.
“The implementation of the rice
tariffication law is really very timely. Had we not done that, if we had been
tardy in terms of doing that, then it would have been worse. The thing about
inflation is that rice is a problem when there is a domestic shortage and if
there is a problem in the timing of import,” he said.
“This time, the timing of imports
will be right on the dot because importers are adept at responding to the
perceptible shortages. They are better at estimating when it is profitable and
when it is not,” he added.
The implementing rules and
regulations (IRR) of the Rice Tarriffication Act is expected to be issued next
week.
Pernia said despite the
occurrence of this phenomenon, NEDA is confident the government can stick to
the two up to four percent target range set for inflation this year.
“I think we can be confident that
we can stay within the target range of two to four percent. Because we now
expect it to hit three percent. So if there will be some impact on inflation it
will still be below four percent,” he said.
NEDA assistant secretary for
regional development Mercedita Sombilla said major rice producing regions were
already able to harvest, thus contributing to domestic rice supply and helping
keep prices stable.
“Major rice producing areas have
more or less harvested their production so I don’t think we will experience
really reduced rice production as a result of this El Niño. And if we note
Pagasa’s report, it has already peaked actually and already weakening over the
next couple of months,” she said.
“Rice prices are still relatively
stable until now. And the rice tariffication law now effective we expect more
private sector participation to get rice imports to beef up domestic supply,”
she added.
How I rose from a frustrated rice hawker to mill proprietor
· Munene Kamau 30th Mar 2019 11:32:32
GMT +0300
Entrepreneur Edwin Kagombe shows off some
milled pishori rice at his Tai Rice Mills in Ngurubani town, Mwea .He mills an
average of 30tons per day.PHOTO;Munene Kamau/standardAbout 20 years ago, Edwin Kagombe was an ordinary rice hawker
at Ngurubani town, Mwea, Kirinyaga County.
He used to hawk
rice from village to village in the 90s before the sector was liberalised by
the government.
“Hawking along
the dusty streets of Ngurubani town was not easy but since I was aiming
for the skies, I soldiered on,” he says.
Back then, the
Mwea Irrigation Scheme was managed by the National Irrigation Board (NIB) that
had a big say in the market. Kagombe would buy paddy rice from the farmers at
Sh30 per kilo, mill it then sell at Sh75 per kilo. But years on, things have
changed. Today, he says the cost of a kilo of paddy rice has gone up to Sh70.
SEE ALSO :Rice farmers reap from new technology
The game changer
came when the market was liberalised and NIB no longer had a monopoly.
As things
improved, slowly by slowly Kagombe established himself in the business and now
he is the proud owner of a Sh100 million rice mill —Tai Rice Millers. He also
has a workforce of 20 employees and a godown which houses the mill. But its
been a journey.
Loss after loss
He recalls how
initially he used to make losses whenever a Passenger Service Vehicle would
stop at the town and the passengers would ask to buy pishori rice only for them
to speed off without paying.
To get money for
the mill was not a walk in the park since all the financial institutions he approached
wanted some collateral.
When he finally
got the cash, the farmer, now in his early 60s, bought the machine from China,
though he says Europe has better quality.
“If one has the
finances and wants high quality mills, I would recommend machines from Britain
and Germany but if you just want something functional at an affordable cost,
China is the place to go,” he advises.
The size and the
model of his mill can cost about Sh350 million in Britain and Germany while in
China, it is just Sh100 million. The machine has a milling capacity of 30
metric tonnes a day.
“Yes Chinese
goods might not be durable or high quality but they come in handy for
entrepreneurs like us,” he says.
Though he has
broken even, one of the biggest challenges he still faces is competition from
cheap imports.
“The cheap
Pakistan grain is dumped into a big store in Mwea always after every harvesting
season since the sector was liberalised in 1998,” the trader says.
Afterwards, the
pure Mwea pishori rice is used to blend the Pakistan one and offered to
unsuspecting consumers at a much cheaper cost.
“The
adulteration of the pure Mwea pishori with cheap imports has affected business
and now consumers have become extra cautious,” he says.
Kagombe says it
is a high time local farmers were protected from unfair market competition.
Cheap imports
At Ngurubani
town alone, there 10 major rice mills and about 200 small ones owned by
individuals. On the issue of cheap imports, the government insists the imports
are necessary since Kenya has a huge deficit of the grain. Scheme manager
Innocent Ariemba says since the country is only able to produce about 100,000
metric tonnes of rice against 400,000 metric tonnes national demand.
He has since
asked farmers to redouble their efforts and produce more as the only sure way
of blocking the cheap imports.
Inflation seen easing to 3.1%-3.9% range
In a statement, the BSP’s
Department of Economic Research (DER) said the lower end of this projection was
slower than the February inflation figure of 3.8 percent.
Mary Grace Padin (The Philippine Star) -
March 31, 2019 - 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Inflation
may have eased further to a range of 3.1 to 3.9 percent this month due to lower
prices of food items, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Friday.
In a statement, the BSP’s
Department of Economic Research (DER) said the lower end of this projection was
slower than the February inflation figure of 3.8 percent.
The projected range likewise
falls within the central bank’s two to four percent target.
According to BSP’s economists,
higher domestic oil prices and the upward adjustment in electricity rates may
have provided upward price pressures to inflation for March.
“These may be partly offset by
lower prices of rice and other agricultural commodities due to the arrival of
imports,” the DER added.
Going forward, the central bank
said it would continue to closely monitor inflation dynamics and ensure that
monetary policy remains appropriate to support the BSP’s price stability
objectives.
Inflation slowed to an 11-month
low of 3.8 percent in February, easing within the BSP’s target of two to four
percent. This brought average inflation to 4.1 percent in the first two months.
Based on its latest assessment,
the BSP slashed its inflation forecast to 3.1 percent for 2019 from the
original assumption of 3.2 percent, while projection for 2020 was retained at
three percent.
BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno
earlier said there is room for the central bank to ease monetary policy.
The BSP earlier expected
inflation to decline by 0.6 percentage point this year and 0.3 to 0.4
percentage point by next year, due to the implementation of Republic Act 11203
or the Rice Tariffication Law.
The law was signed by President
Duterte in February, and became effective on March 5.
It seeks to liberalize the
importation of rice into the country by removing the quantitative restrictions
on rice imports, in favor of imposing tariffs.
Bangladesh asks all countries to
adhere to Paris climate conference decisions
Senior Correspondent
Published: 30 Mar 2019 10:17 AM BdST Updated: 30 Mar 2019 10:23 AM BdST
Bangladesh wants
the decisions of the COP 24, where the Paris climate change agreement was
forged, to be “adhered to by all the stakeholders”.
“The big emitters must go for
rapid mitigation of GHGs, and the pledges to mobilise $100 billion annually by
2020 and an ambitious replenishment for the Green Climate Fund in 2019 must be
materialised,” State minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam said.
He said Bangladesh is of the
“firm view” that climate change and sustainable development are “interlinked”
and addressing climate change should be at the heart of the international
development discourse.
“We must redouble our efforts for
sustainable development,” he said, speaking at the High-Level Meeting on
‘Climate and Sustainable Development for All’ at the UN headquarters in New
York on Friday.
He said the international
community must support vulnerable developing countries with financial resources
and appropriate technologies in support of their adaptation efforts.
The General Assembly convened
this meeting to focus the protection of the global climate for present and
future generations, in the context of the economic, social and environmental
dimensions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It is a part of the preparatory
process for the upcoming Climate Action Summit of the Secretary-General
scheduled in September 2019 to achieve the long-term goals of the Paris
Agreement and the 2030 Agenda.
The state minister said the
findings of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degree Celsius
about the dangerous consequences of global warming in the areas of poverty
eradication, food security, and public health are “alarming”.
“Thus, our conviction is reinforced
that the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is
contingent upon our success in halting global climate change and reduce
disaster risks,” he said.
Bangladesh is one of the most
climate vulnerable countries in the world.
The impacts of climate change
will put severe stress on its limited land. The rapid meltdown of the glaciers
will dry up rivers, which are basically the catchments of the Himalayan
glaciers.
This will impact the fertility of
land leading to desertification. Climate change and sea level rise induced
salinity and other disasters are also harming rice and other crop production
significantly.
Just a 1-degree centigrade
increase of global temperature and further sea level rise will result in
inundation of large parts of Bangladesh and the subsequent displacement of 40
million people by the end of this century.
“Two percent of our GDP is
regularly lost due to natural calamities and environmental degradation,” the
state minister said.
“Hence, climate change poses an
existential threat to our over 160 million people, although we had hardly
contributed to the deterioration of the environment.”
He highlighted Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina’s commitment to the Paris Agreement at different international
fora with the claim that, “Bangladesh will never exceed the average per capita
emission of the developing world.”
“Tackling climate change is
directly linked with sustainable development and resilience building,” Alam
said, “In line with this perspective, Bangladesh is carrying forward its
efforts for sustainable development with specific plans for ‘carbon budgeting’,
‘de-carbonisation of manufacturing pathways’ and low-carbon industrialisation.”
He, however, said the Rohingya
crisis is “not only impacting our land and environment severely but also our
development and adaptation efforts” as Bangladesh has given shelter to 1.1
million forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals.
THIS WEEK’S MILESTONES: March 31 to April 6,
2019
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:19 AM March 31,
2019
April 3-5, 2013
The Department of Agriculture and its
attached agency, the Philippine Rice Research Institute
(PhilRice), organized the country’s first National Hybrid Rice Congress at the
PhilRice headquarters at Science City of Muñoz in Nueva Ecija province.
With the
theme “Bigas na Sapat, Binhing Hybrid ang Kabalikat,” the congress highlighted
the importance of the hybrid rice industry in the government’s vision of
attaining rice sufficiency under its Food Staples Sufficiency Program.
According to
PhilRice, hybrid seeds increase farmers’ rice yield by 21 percent compared to
the conventional or regular seeds.
Project
proponents from public and private sectors have introduced various hybrid rice
seed varieties since the government’s launching of the Hybrid Rice
Commercialization Program in 2002.
April 4,
2017
Personnel
from different government agencies dismantled fish pens in Laguna de Bay’s
section in Binangonan and Cardona towns in Rizal province.
The move to
clear the lake of fish pens and cages, which have been choking the lake for
decades, was part of the government’s efforts to rehabilitate the
90,000-hectare Laguna de Bay, the country’s largest freshwater body.
Of the entire
lake area, about 12,000 ha are covered by fish pens owned by more or less 300
individuals and corporations.
Fish pen
owners were given until March 31, 2017, to demolish their structures, or else
the government would sequester their structures. But many fish pen owners
defied the order.
Smart farming
comes to town
·
TONY MAGHIRANG
A kind of digital transformation
is making inroads into the Philippine agriculture sector. On surface, it
appears to be the application of “artificial intelligence,” no pun intended, to
Filipino farmers who are generally viewed as one of the poorest, most exploited
but among the hardest working citizens in a supposedly growing national
economy.
A typical farmer is 58 years old,
lives in a rural community and earns about $50 a month to feed a family of five
members. He does not own the land he tills from sunup to sundown.
Today’s farmer may also be the
last of a dying breed. Enrollment in agricultural schools is reportedly at an
all-time low and with free college education, farming parents, other than
traders and their ilk, will work harder to give their children that big break
at a white collar job in the city or abroad. There are even stories that some
Filipino farmers have chosen to go to other countries like Japan where their
age-old homegrown skills are better appreciated.
This state of affairs is usually
attributed to lack of support but the Department of Agriculture (DA), for
example, has always been allocating its multi-billion peso annual budget in
training, extension work, farm improvement and mechanization and related
services that should redound to enhanced farm productivity and higher farmer
incomes. On the heels of the latest round of rice industry debacles, the agency
renewed its scientific and technical partnership with the International Rice
Research Institute to address the continuing challenges posed by climate change
and food security to the sector.
To also help reduce endemic
poverty in farming communities, a host of responses anchored on new
technologies is being launched under the banner of smart farming. Innovations
in fintech or financial technology such as e-wallets and blockchain are
expected to facilitate the financial inclusion of sectors including farmers
currently underserved by banking institutions. The basic idea is for the
tillers to gain access to time-sensitive loans and slowly transform them into
enterprising individuals.
Not to denigrate the Filipino
farmers but many of them have only primary school education and it may take
some time for them to understand new technology, let alone get weaned from
technological and financial bondage with their favorite middleman, or landlord
for that matter. Borrowing and probably entrepreneurship may be for their
skilled sons and daughters, who may not be taking up their father’s laborious
legacy any day soon.
So far, the biggest and most
promising breakthrough is the establishment of a Smart Plant Production in
Controlled Environments (Spice) project at University of the Philippines campus
in Diliman. Supported by the DoST, the university’s Institute of Biology and
the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Institute are building a P128
million nursery of endemic and indigenous plants.
The smart farm, which started
construction last year, will promote the adoption of advanced farming methods
to increase harvests and minimize losses. It is also being seen as a model for
urban farming and a platform for plant conservation.
It’s definitely a worthwhile
undertaking but here’s the thing. Promotions-wise, where does the project stand
in relation to UP Los Baños being the foremost and well-recognized seat of
agricultural advancement in the country? Likewise, will there be a cooperative
link with similar initiatives such as the smart greenhouses being propagated by
DA with South Korea?
And sure, we get it, urban
farming at a crucial time when it’s the rural stakeholders who need all the
help they can get.
Research: New gene
essential for making ears of corn
March 29, 2019
A team of scientists led by
University of Missouri maize geneticist Paula McSteen has identified a gene
essential for forming the ears in corn.
The new research, which appears
in the journal Molecular Plant, extends the
growing biological understanding of how different parts of corn plants develop,
which is important information for a crop that is a mainstay of the global food
supply.
“Corn is a vitally important
crop, and the ears are the most crucial organ for plant yield. Knowing the
genes that control this process and how they function together at a molecular
level is crucial for efforts to increase crop yield,” said McSteen, who is an
associate professor of biological sciences in the College of Arts and Science
and a principal investigator in Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center. “The
information we glean from corn is also likely to be applicable to other
cereals, including rice and wheat, because they also form grains on branches.”
The researchers found that a gene
called barren stalk2, or ba2, affects development of axillary meristems, which
are special cells that give rise to the ears. As a corn plant grows, these
cells are formed at nodes along the stalk. These nodes look like tiny grooves,
or indentations, in the stem. When the plant is ready to make ears, these cells
begin to divide and bud out from the stalk. These buds elongate to form the ear
shoots and ultimately become the harvestable ears. The process is initiated by
delivery of a hormone, called auxin, to the nodes that signals the cells to
make ears.
To find the genes needed to
produce organs like ears or anything else, geneticists look for plants that
cannot make the organ properly. Plants with mutations in the ba2 gene never
make ears, hence the name “barren stalk.” The mutant plants do not have the
grooves where the ears would form, which suggests that the gene functions
early, before the ear bud forms. The ba2 mutant was discovered in a large
genetic screen for corn plants unable to make ears, and the gene was identified
by molecular mapping to chromosome 2.
Previous screens like this
identified a mutation in a different gene, called barren stalk1 or ba1, that is
also essential for making an ear. This other gene plays a key role in a
molecular signaling pathway that controls ear development. To test whether the
newly identified barren stalk plants have a different problem, the researchers
performed genetic crosses, known as a complementation test, and concluded that
the phenotype they observed in their plant was caused by a mutation in a
totally different gene.
“Interestingly, this is actually
a lost-and-found case,” said McSteen. “We found that our mutation had
previously been identified and characterized back in 1930, but had been lost
sometime in the intervening years. It’s exciting to have been able to
rediscover it and add it back to the stock.”
Through a series of additional
analyses, the scientists found that the ba2 gene interacts genetically with the
ba1 gene and that the corresponding proteins form a complex. ba2 also interacts
with other genes known to regulate ba1. Together, these findings demonstrate
that ba2 is in the same molecular signaling pathway as ba1 and that the two
genes work in concert to regulate the development of ears.
“The end goal is to identify all
the genetic players involved in controlling how and when corn ears are made. By
identifying this new gene and showing that it forms a complex with BA1 to
control meristem development, we’ve been able to bring this important story
further along than what had been known previously,” said McSteen.
Other researchers involved in the
study included Andrea Skirpan with Penn State University; Brian Waddell and
Simon Malcomber with California State University; and Hong Yao, Michaela S.
Matthes, Norman Best, Tyler McCubbin, Amanda Durbak, and Taylor Smith with the
University of Missouri.
In an accompanying review article
in the same issue of the journal, McSteen and colleagues describe the current
state of genetic research on auxin in corn, rice, and Arabidopsis. The review
focuses in particular on the genes known to be involved in “turning on” the
auxin hormone and getting it to the right place in the plant.
“Auxin is important to understand
because it controls everything. Understanding the function of genes involved in
the synthesis, transport, and signaling of auxin has been difficult because of
a redundancy in gene function and expression. But now with new gene editing tools,
like CRISPR technology, everyone is excited about being able to do this,” said
McSteen.The research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation.
Basmati rice export may hit a record level of
Rs 30,000 cr this season
However, the export volume is only marginally
higher at 2 per cent
Virendra Singh Rawat | Lucknow Last
Updated at March 29, 2019 00:44 IST
Basmati rice export is projected to hit a record level of Rs 30,000 crore or nearly $4.28 billion (at Rs 70 a dollar) this season. In addition, shippers are getting a higher realisation vis-à-vis their procurement cost.
The largest exported variety, Pusa 1121, saw an average procurement price of Rs 35,000-38,000 a tonne in the current 2018-19 season, about 8.5 per cent higher than the Rs 33,000-35,000 a tonne in 2017-18. However, export realisation at Rs 74,000 a tonne in the first 10 months of this financial year (April 2018 to January 2019) was 14 per cent more than the Rs 65,000 a tonne in the same period of 2017-18.
In these 10 months, basmati export has been almost $4.1 billion, about 11.4 per cent higher than the nearly $3.7 billion a year before.
Rating agency Icra notes the export volume is only marginally higher at two per cent, while realisation is 14 per cent higher. Over the next few quarters, goes the forecast, export market demand would remain steady, supported by resumption of import in the key market of Iran.
Icra assistant vice-president Deepak Jotwani says the growth had occurred despite some challenges, such as the pesticide residue issue leading to a fall in shipment to the European Union (EU), Saudi Arabia mulling adoption of stringent pesticide rules, payment issues with Iranian importers and uncertainty due to imposition of trade sanctions on Iran by the American government.
Kohinoor Foods joint managing director Gurnam Arora told Business Standard the export market was steady and shipment to Iran had been growing. However, he felt, total export this year would be lower than the previous season’s four million tonnes.
Govt extends duty benefits to non-basmati rice exporters to boost shipment
Basmati paddy prices have ruling high over the past two financial years, 2016-17 and 2017-18. In the current season, production is five per cent less as some farmers had shifted to non-basmati varieties due to a considerable increase in the minimum support price (MSP) for these. Also, there was untimely rain in key growing states.
As a result, paddy prices rose over 10 per cent across varieties. The increase in average realisation is likely to sustain in the first half of 2019-20, owing to the increase in paddy costs in the recently concluded procurement season and a steady international as well as domestic demand outlook, Icra says.
India Rice Exporters Association (AIREA) executive director Vinod Kaul said higher realisation for farmers could result in more sowing the coming season, although this is some months away.
“Beside, production of basmati would depend upon good monsoons, since paddy is basically a water-flooded crop and good rainfall is key to output,” he said.
“The West Asian markets have seen good demand for basmati this season. Beside, the sector has emerged from the initial hiccups of demonetisation and implementation of the Goods and Services Tax,” says Mumbai-based rice exporter Devendra Vora.
First Published: Fri, March 29 2019. 00:44 IST
Salt-tolerant kewda
gene to be used in rice
03-1
The species,
"Salinity is one of the major causes of huge loss of crop productivity arising mainly due to natural human activities and rampant use of chemical fertilisers," said a professor at the department of botany, Altafhusain Nadaf.
Nadaf
also said, "The fruit and flower-bearing plant variety is highly fertile,
which gave us a clue that the species harbours salt-tolerant genes."
The rice plant can tolerate salt up to a maximum capacity of 100 millimolar. In comparison, the kewda plant can tolerate up to 2.5 molar ofsodium
chloride (salt), which is 25 times higher than that of rice.
"The responsible gene, Asparagine synthetase, was identified using integrative transcriptomic and metabolomics analysis," said co-investigator Vitthal Barvkar, assistant professor at SPPU's botany department.
Barvkar said that the activity of identifying the gene was strictly inducible under salt stress and added that the study has been published in theinternational
journal Nature Scientific Reports.
The rice plant can tolerate salt up to a maximum capacity of 100 millimolar. In comparison, the kewda plant can tolerate up to 2.5 molar of
"The responsible gene, Asparagine synthetase, was identified using integrative transcriptomic and metabolomics analysis," said co-investigator Vitthal Barvkar, assistant professor at SPPU's botany department.
Barvkar said that the activity of identifying the gene was strictly inducible under salt stress and added that the study has been published in the
Such an exercise of transferring gene to rice crop has been conducted earlier as well, with gene isolated from mangroves. However, this is the first time that such an attempt is made with the highly salt-tolerant kewda species.
DeoRashmi, a PhD scholar on the project, said, "The sample was picked up from Diveagar village in Shrivardhan taluka. Though the plant grows there in abundance, very little work has been done to understand its salt tolerance level."
Narendra Kadoo, principal scientist at NCL, Pune, a collaborator in this work, said that the process of transfer of genes can have great applications. "Climate change has resulted in the increase of salinity in soil," Kadoo added.
