Export curbs may be eased.
NEW DELHI: The United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre will review a ban on wheat exports and curbs on overseas sales of basmati rice, but shipments of other grades of rice will not be allowed at least until November, food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Thursday....

Wine tourism brings Mallya and Pawar together.
PUNE: Baramati, agriculture minister Sharad Pawar's carefully nursed constituency, is a hot spot in more ways than one. After hosting major international engineering automobile units, state-of-the-art educational institutes and bio-tech parks, it will soon host wine tourists. And the promise in this regards has come from none...

Jai Kisan v2.0:New FTP chapter to be farm-friendly.
Byline: Amiti Sen (##include msid=2459375,type=9 ##) NEW DELHI: The government's focus on agriculture and farmers is all set to go beyond the Budget proposals announced last month. The annual supplement to the foreign trade policy (FTP) to be announced early next month is likely to...

Welfare sops account for 10L tonnes/month.
NEW DELHI: A review of the food situation has underlined that procurement will be crucial to government's efforts to maintain buffer stocks and supplies for the slew of welfare schemes that have been expanded as well as prioritized. The outgo of foodgrain, at least on paper, for...

SunEthanol's Technology Tapped for Cellulosic Ethanol Project.
ENERGY RESOURCE-4 February 2008-SunEthanol's Technology Tapped for Cellulosic Ethanol Project(C)2008 JeraOne - http://www.jeraone.com SunEthanol today said its Q Microbe technology will be utilized in one of four small-scale biorefinery projects tapped by the Department of Energy for work on advancing the development of cellulosic ethanol. ...

Modify the hardness of cereal grain.
Puroindolines are lipid-binding proteins from wheat flour. Whether wheat is classified as hard or soft is based on the texture of the grain and ultimately determines milling and end-use characteristics. Puroindolines are responsible for much genetic variation in texture. USDA-ARS scientists have developed a way to modify...

Table talk: Michael Pollan chats with Rod Dreher about how food culture can transcend the Left-Right divide.
Rod Dreher is the author of Crunchy Cons--the book and the Beliefnet blog--and an editorialist for the Dallas Morning News. On TAC's behalf, he recently interviewed Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of The Ominivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. Pollan's work, like Dreher's, is about more than just...

Local seafood industry in troubled waters.
KOCHI: The domestic seafood industry expressed concerns over disturbing trends like increase in number of closures of processing units and thinning operating margins in an industry hit by crisis after crisis. The issue was raised at the India International Seafood Show 2008 where around 550 delegates from...

Mango exports to US likely to swell this year.
Byline: Jayashree Bhosale PUNE : Mango exports from India to the US will begin from the first week of April, a month earlier than last year, and in much larger numbers. However, exporters are waiting for Barc's new irradiation facility at Vashi, Navi Mumbai, to get approvals...

Wheat your appetite: Hedging, imports may resume next yr.
Byline: Subhash Narayan & Prabha Jagannathan NEW DELHI: The government has decided to keep its options open on wheat futures hedging and imports in the next fiscal (2009-10). This comes in the backdrop of a historic wheat output level and record wheat procurement by government agencies of...