Last year, the rain clouds left Bihar dry. This time, the monsoon mood is favorable for the state. So, the government expects bumper production of paddy and maize. Farmers were a bit uncomfortable last month, due to deficit rainfall. However, August has been favorable, making up these losses.

“Last year was very difficult for us, but that is past. We are hoping for a good crop this year,” said Ashok Kumar Sinha, agriculture production commissioner. “If everything goes as expected, in this season we will be producing seven million tonnes of paddy and almost a million tonnes of maize. We are expecting a good output of pulses, too.”

New research by scientists at the University of California, Riverside shows that evolution – genetic changes in populations over time – can occur so rapidly in organisms that its impact on population numbers and other aspects of biology can be seen within just a few generations.

The research, published online Aug. 9 in Ecology Letters, the highest ranked journal in the field of ecology, can improve scientists' ability to predict the growth and spread of endangered species, invasive species, and disease epidemics.

Atmospheric levels of methane, 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat, stayed steady for two decades to 2006 on wider fertilizer use to grow rice or a surge in natural gas demand, according to two separate studies in the journal Nature.

Climate researcher Fuu Ming Kai from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Singapore research center said in one study that methane output from rice fields in the Northern Hemisphere dropped during the period as fertilizers replaced manure and because of reduced water use.

Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels can reverse the drying effects of predicted higher temperatures on semi-arid rangelands, according to a study published today in the scientific journal Nature by a team of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and university scientists.

Warmer temperatures increase water loss to the atmosphere, leading to drier soils. In contrast, higher CO2 levels cause leaf stomatal pores to partly close, lessening the amount of water vapor that escapes and the amount of water plants draw from soil.

The method uses gas-permeable membrane technology that tests have shown could remove 50 percent of the dissolved ammonium in liquid manure in 20 days. The removed ammonium is "not scrubbed but captured," said Dr. Saqib Mukhtar, AgriLife Extension engineer and interim associate department head of the Texas A&M University department of biological and agricultural engineering.

This is a finding of the first major study of the ecosystem effects of fishing forage species: 'Impacts of fishing low trophic level species on marine ecosystems', recently reported in the journal Science.

Dr Tony Smith of CSIRO's Wealth from Oceans Flagship led the international team of 12 authors from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Africa, France and Peru.

Tom Trout, research leader of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Water Management Research Unit (WMRU) in Fort Collins, Colo., and his colleagues are measuring crop water-use efficiency not by the traditional measure of crop yield per drop of irrigation water applied, but instead yield per drop of water actually taken in by the crop.