Nature Hub

    From- BBC World News BY-  Miranda Lipton Edited by - Amal Udawatta   Chapul Farms (Credit: Chapul Farms) These tiny soldiers can eat four times their own weight in organic waste – and turn it into sustainable fertiliser. With a unique ability to consume nearly any form of organic matter it comes across, one small but mighty insect is becoming a tool to address the growing problem of organic waste and soil degradation. The bug, black soldier fly larvae (BSFL), transforms food waste into nutrient-rich biofertiliser: frass. Insects have been long been used in agricultural practices as a  food source  – but now farmers are exploring the potential of bug poo as a sustainable fertiliser. With over  33%  of the world's soil currently degraded, depleted of the nutrients necessary for healthy plant growth, frass can play a major role in restoring soil biodiversity and quality.  In May 2024, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA)  awarded gra...

  From BBC News   By-  Kamala Thiagarajan   Edited by - Amal Udawatta Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme Lakshmi and Shantha with a species of tuber locally called the Noorang (Credit: Sai Krishan, Thirunelly Tribal Special Intervention Programme) In a tribe in southern India, a group of women are working hard to revive the country's ancient native tubers, and bring them back into everyday culture. Lakshmi spends several hours each day digging out large lumpy and hairy yam tubers, starchy roots that grow below the soil. Some weigh an unwieldy 5kg (11lb) and are 4.5ft-long (1.4m), almost as tall as she is. It's painstaking work, says 58-year-old Lakshmi, who goes by one name. First, she has to cut out the thick shoot above the ground. Then, she uses shovels to dig up the earth around the buried stem and a paddle-like flat chisel to gently pry out the tuber. She uses her hands to dig the tuber out of the ground to avoid damaging its delicate...

 From Sci Div Net By - Sanjeet Bagcchi Edited by Vinuri Randhula Silva, A Bangladeshi farmer transplants rice. Underground reservoirs are being tapped to supply smallholder farms in Bangladesh. Copyright:  International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)   (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) . This image has been cropped. , . . [NEW DELHI] The pumping up of groundwater by Bangladesh’s 16 million smallholder farmers has led to a massive storage capture of underground reservoirs rivalling the storage capacity of the world’s large dams, according to a study . Published in   Science,   the   study   said that groundwater-fed irrigation had transformed much of Bangladesh’s single-crop, rain-watered floodplains into highly productive double-cropping and, in places, triple-cropping lands to make the country the world’s fourth highest producer of rice. The researchers say the  sustainable  irrigation process could be replicated in other areas affected by the impacts of...