Even as the national highway has opened, only a few trucks are plying with the result that fruits are not only rotting in cold storages but also in orchards. Losses so far: Rs 500 crore.

Himachal''s apple revolution, which spawned an economy worth Rs 1,500 crore, has its roots in the Kotgarh belt in the upper Shimla region, 82 km from here.

This tiny pest was ravaging mint crops until one day scientists found out how to deal with it.

In the very first year of the 11th Five Year Plan, the agriculture sector in Uttar Pradesh has suffered a setback...

The Uttar Pradesh Government has asked the sugarcane industry to adopt agro-techniques to boost productivity.

With the World Bank giving a call to shift focus on agriculture to tackle food crisis, data gleaned from Punjab's villages only add to its urgency.

Punjab not only banned early sowing and reined in errant millers this paddy season but also relied on large-scale mechanisation.

In a situation mirroring the change in the national economy, the tertiary sector in Jammu and Kashmir is fast threatening to overtake the primary sector.

One new variety each of three vegetables - bittergourd, bottlegourd and vegetable pea developed by the scientists of G B Pant University of Agriculture...

Earlier, sanitation of the field by removal and destruction of affected papaya plants was the only way adopted by the farmers to reduce the spread of the papaya mosaic virus disease. In some cases, losses were minimised by controlling the population of aphids.

"These machines have become all the more significant with the government declaring support price on the basis of parameters like staple length and micronaire value"

Even as Kashmir loses thousands of hectares of its agricultural land to urbanisation...

With the Rabi season around the corner, farmers in Jammu and Kashmir are facing an acute shortage of chemical fertilisers.

Just when Kashmir''s walnut kernel had begun doing brisk business in the international markets, recession hit and its rates tumbled, resulting in heavy losses to the growers, traders and exporters alike...

Whenever Vidarbha''s farm crisis is debated, the blame is often thrust on the farmers themselves.

The exhaustive Dictionary of Indian Plant Gums, Resins, Dyes and Related Products by Dr M I H Farooqi is a unique effort...

They slogged to make it to prestigious engineering colleges of the country. Only to return to the farms in their villages and try their hand at something.....

Pune-Based entrepreneur Rajiv Devkar seems to have hit the jackpot in his quest to preserve mangoes without the use of cold storage facilities.

Satnam Singh Mann and his group of dairy farmers are easily fielding a volley of questions from management students at Punjab Agricultural University.

The current spell of rainfall and snow in the upper and middle hills of Himachal Pradesh may translate into some respite for farmers and orchardists...

For the past year and a half, Assistant Excise and Taxation Commissioner Y S Matta is doing organic farming on his 30 acres of land in Kalomajra village....

It''s no longer serving its purpose only in the household kitchen. High-quality potato produced in the lower region of Himachal Pradesh....

If the Congress-led government returns to power, it will help resume exports of wheat and rice and continue existing policies but if it needs the support of its Leftist allies....

Even though the weather and soil conditions here can seldom be compared, the yield seems to have transcended those boundaries.

While varieties like Rajapuri haven''t made it to the Mumbai markets at all, others like Badami and Lalbaug have been hit by a peculiar lack of demand

Tomato and capsicum crops grown in the mid-hills of the state are increasingly being lost to collar rot and leaf blight diseases.

The National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, is working to develop transgenic varieties of mangoes and bananas...

Soaring potato prices have returned to haunt farmers and average consumers this summer again.

As urbanisation feasts on Dehradun''s famed rice, its cultivation moves out of the traditional zones of Majra and Niranjanpur to elsewhere in Uttarakhand. The government, too, admits as much in the Assembly....

An Oriya meal isn''t complete without dal, either arhar (lentil) or moong (green gram), in liberal quantity.

The Saurashtra Kutch region, popularly known as India''s groundnut bowl, is threatening to fall off the agricultural map.

Agricultural scientists from ten states have embarked on a hunt to trace and isolate five harmful "invasive weeds" which made their...

With the high price of potato becoming another issue in the hands of the Opposition to beat the beleaguered Left Front government with...

In a year characterised by the aftershocks of economic slow down hitting almost every sector, apple orchard owners in Himachal Pradesh still have reason to smile.

Despite the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee giving its nod to the commercial cultivation of Bt Brinjal last week....

While other states are giving out distress signals of foodgrain scarcity, triggered by drought and flood fury, Punjab is not only looking at a good harvest but also hoping to gain from this adversity....

Two droughts wiping out 50 per cent of the rabi crop, the apple produce reduced to half of its usual quantity, the unusual rise in temperature...

It prided itself for being the land of orchards. This year, however, many in Karnikhera village in the border district of Ferozepur in Punjab...

She is possibly the most expensive baby in the country today and certainly among the most pampered.

After Amritsar successfully began cultivating early crops of vegetables using tunnel technology a few years ago, Jalandhar, too, has decided to follow suit....

At Ratu village in Ranchi district, farmers use buckets to pull water from wells to irrigate their fields. Repeating the work in...

When he would come home from his modest half-acre farm after sundown, Ramesh Pradhan wouldn''t go near his children and wife until he had bathed and changed his clothes.

Across the Malihabad town of Uttar Pradesh, growers are joyously looking at their blooming trees. This year has seen a record flowering and the blooms are so far not even infested with pests.

Growing moong with sugarcane and mango orchard has turned out to be a successful cropping pattern in summer for Bihar''s Samastipur farmers....

The fate of the birthplace of famous Dashehari variety of mango, the Dashehari village, is hanging in a balance.

Once renowned as among the best in the world, the one and a half century old Kangra tea might be on its way to a comeback if the government''s efforts bear fruit.

In spite of a bumper mango crop this year, the mango growers of the famous Maal-Malihabad belt of UP are the losers.

India''s agrarian economy has long been plagued by the lack of storage, marketing and processing facilities....

Demand of flowers in the forthcoming Commonwealth Games, the price of Himachal apples in Delhi markets, a new subsidy scheme for polyhouses, or new varieties of maize developed at a research centre....

It has already helped grow cereals and fodder in the desertland of Qatar, mangrove species along the highly saline Gujarat coastline, and a wide variety of plantation crops on wastelands covered with fly ash....