Cloud covers India’s rice up growth

In findings that may have a significant resonance for India's agricultural economy, U.S. researchers have reported that pollution has stifled growth in the country's rice harvest.Since the mid 1980s, the stub-born brown cloud of pollution that shrouds much of India, coupled with increased concentrations of green house gases, together have limited both the yields and extent of rice farms in the nine states that account for most of the country's wet season harvest, University of California researchers report in a study.Had both farms of pollution been cut, India's rice harvest across those States would have increased more than 14% between 1985 and 1998, they report that it could have helped restore the rate of growth to that seen in the 1960s and 1970s in the immediate wake of the Green revolution that allowed India to become self sufficient in rice production.

(The Hindu, 7 December 2006)