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Feeling no pain: plants were first to let it happen

Age of Herbals somewhere  during  1565 in this part of globe saw many medical man searching...

Sitopaladi churna is an ayurvedic medicine for cough and cold

Sitopaladi churna is an ayurvedic medicine for cough and cold and sneezing nose. A little portion...

Ethnobotany and Ocimum sanctum (Tulsi)

The term 'ethnobotany' was first applied by Harshberger in 1895 to the study of plants used by...

Gene, gene expression, gene silencing and RNAi

Gene Expression?–What is a Gene?A gene codes for a homogeneous ‘functional unit’ – classically...

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Ashwani KumarRSS Feed of this column.

Professor Emeritus ,Former Head of the Department of Botany, and Director Life Sciences, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. 302004, India At present freelance consultant with Bioenergia. Spain and... Read More »

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If you happen to travel by air on good sunny day across India and  you are crossing Aravallis and hills of Udaipur and Ajmer and Jaipur  its needless to mention that hills which were once covered with thick forests have gone barren and getting degraded and denunded at a very faster rate with scores of visible or invisible mining sites. 

Satellite imagaries will confirm my observations if you compare of present with that of 10 or 20 years ago.  Huge water bodies are dry and banks are degraded. Silting has filled most of the rivers .

Making dams has worsened the situations.
Some time ago there was tough fight for gases and fuels below the earth. People or companies take possession of natural resources and exploit them at will and Governments get pittance while the companies make billions from extracting natural resources in form of oil , coal, minerals or forests These companies belong to private owners whose main concern is to gain profits.
Mankind is the sufferer
Who has right to sell reserves of minerals , oil, gas to private companies or exploit themselves unhindered because two third of the mankind is too young to understand anything and rest are powerless.
Otherday there was legal battle that someone extracted more minerals but how the minerals start belonging to one person or one company ?
Some time ago there was tough fight for gases and fuels below the earth. People or companies take possession of natural resources and exploit them at will and Governments get pittance while the companies make billions from extracting natural resources in form of oil , coal, minerals or forests These companies belong to private owners whose main concern is to gain profits.
Mankind is the sufferer
Who has right to sell reserves of minerals , oil, gas to private companies or exploit themselves unhindered because two third of the mankind is too young to understand anything and rest are powerless.
Otherday there was legal battle that someone extracted more minerals but how the minerals start belonging to one person or one company ?
Many a times I feel sad that  questions are  being raised about plantation of trees and reducing the global warming.
Other day people have pictures of their houses those houses which have plants in their surroundings having cooling effect in the environment and reducing expenditure on air conditioner and its emissions . Its simple logic that if each house plants enough trees to keep their house cool and if each of the 8 billion people plant one tree in their house hold or in adjoining area global warming will be thing of the past ?
Can we just give a try . However the question is which plant and on which land and by whom ?
To make the bio-diesel from Calotropis Procera. I have searched a lot on internet and journals on this plant. I want to know that this plant is better than the Jatropha for this purpose. I wnat your help on this because I have a very few days left and I have to submit the plan. The first question possibly will be "Prove that Calotropis is better option then Jatropha. Question by Nitin Lahoti My answer to the question to prove that Calotropis is better option is as below. There are 5 main considerations in terms of a. Biomass production b. land availability, c. cropping requirements d. harvesting techniques e. regeneration potential. Calotropis beats Jatropha on all the five points

"First of all, FACT agrees that many unsubstantiated claims have been made on jatropha, such as high yields on marginal soils, low water and nutrient requirements, and high resistance to pests and diseases. These claims have already been falsified some years ago

2 but it seems difficult to convince all practitioners and policy makers of the facts. Despite the slowly increasing body of knowledge on jatropha cultivation methods, the agronomy of the plant is still largely unknown, and the risks of disappointing yields are substantial.