Food Security

Scientists from Norway and Nepal say they are ready to launch a plan to manipulate the breeding cycle of carp stocks and get the fish species to spawn more than once a year to improve food security in the Himalayan country. The plan for a low-cost system for off-season fry production was announced last month at the first annual review of the USD3.3 million, four-year, Fish Farming Development (FFD) project that was launched in April 2012.

China and India, the world's two most populous countries, are beset by stagnation in the production of staples like rice, wheat, soybean and maize (corn), says a new study on crop yield growth. Based on statistics from around the world during the 1951– 2008 period, the study 'Recent patterns of crop yield growth and stagnation', says that for some crops in China and India the spatial extent of yield stagnation is more than half the cropped area.

Asia's wheat and maize production will be severelyaffected by climate change as early as the 2020s — with potentially devastating impacts on food security, a new report warns. Previous climate change projections have covered long periods: for example, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on predicting changes for the period 2050–2100. The new report — 'Food Security: Near future projections of the impact of drought in Asia' — focuses on the 2020s, and highlights the areas policymakers need to address immediately.

The Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday announced relief for the solar energy sector by proposing to scrap duties on imports of solar-thermal equipment as the country it seeks to reduce project costs for Reliance Power and other developers adding plants as part of his annual budget speech

Governments across Asia need to improve their regulation of way that pesticides are marketed and should ban certain pesticides from use in rice production completely, according to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), writes Mike Ives of Sci-Dev.net. IRRI, which is based in Manila, the Philippines, released an action plan listing potential strategies for scaling back pesticide use and adopting ecological growing techniques at a conference in Vietnam, held under the title "Threats of Insecticide Misuse in Rice Ecosystems — Exploring Options for Mitigation".