Can preserving Goa’s Khazans address climate threats?

04/04/2024 2 Comments read Climate Change, Environment & Development, Health & Science

A khazan dyke/sluice gate in Divar island, Tiswadi taluka of Goa. Photo Credit: ©Elsa Fernandes, President, Khazan Society of Goa

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 04.04.2024 (IPS): Growing up in a khazan ecosystem, the traditional agricultural practice followed in the south-western Indian state of Goa, Elsa Fernandes would love sitting in a koddo, a woven bamboo structure for storing paddy. Her family members would pour paddy around her and with the growing pile, she would rise to the top and then jump down with joy.

“Rice crop for us meant play, work and earnings. Whatever I am today is because of the khazans,” says Fernandes, an environmental architect and president of the Goa Khazan Society, an organization of concerned citizens and experts dedicated to preserving the khazan ecosystem.

The khazan ecosystem has played an intrinsic role in alleviating the effects of soil salinization, conserving biodiversity, and ensuring food security for over 3500 years. But this sustainable agriculture practice is facing increasing pressure from neglect, mismanagement, environmental degradation, and commercialization of land and fishing rights, even as threats posed by climate change loom large.

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“I haven’t forgotten where I came from,” says Yvonne Pinto, incoming IRRI Chief

29/02/2024 0 Comments read Gender, Health & Science

Yvonne Pinto, incoming IRRI chief. Photo Credit: ©Supplied by Yvonne Pinto

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 28.02.2024 (IPS): Growing up on a small farming station in Holetta (Ethiopia), Yvonne Pinto would accompany her agriculturist father to the farm, where she would spend her time cross-fertilizing plants. Her tiny fingers making the task easier, as she would marvel at the end product of a prospective new and higher yielding variety. These formative years laid the foundation for her career in agricultural science.

Ethiopia in the late 1970s and 1980s was ravaged by a terrible famine, drought, civil war, and international conflict. It became clear to Pinto from the outset that such exigencies could rapidly deteriorate everyday life and the absence of food could decimate a population. These events instilled in her a deep appreciation for the role agriculture and food systems play in human survival.

“I haven’t forgotten where I came from,” says Pinto, the incoming Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI). A second-generation Kenyan by birth, she feels privileged to have been brought up in Ethiopia, a country that was never colonized and where she felt fortunate to grow up as an equal, a rare experience then.

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Mimicked red algae enzyme has potential to improve crop production

05/10/2020 0 Comments read Health & Science

By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 05.10.2020 (SciDev.Net): Australian scientists have discovered a way to engineer more efficient versions of the plant enzyme Rubisco by using a red algae-like Rubisco from a bacterium, which has the potential to improve production of crops like sorghum, wheat and rice in the Asia Pacific region and the world.

The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on 29^th September 2020, aims to improve the process of photosynthesis to increase growth and yield of major crops.

Rubisco (Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase), the most abundant enzyme on earth, performs the carbon dioxide fixing step of photosynthesis and its slow activity often limits the growth rate of plants. The Rubisco from red algae and Rhodobacter sphaeroides, a kind of purple bacterium that can obtain energy through photosynthesis, share a common lineage, say researchers.

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