The Telegraph

A small step Halima Bibi took two years ago has turned into a stride that will take the unassuming mother of two from Malda to the national capital to receive a central government award. Life changed for Halima, who used to divide her time between domestic chores and odd jobs, when she suddenly decided the family should switch from growing paddy to maize in the summer of 2017 and threw herself into the effort. By the end of the financial year, Halima had emerged as one of the largest growers of maize in Bengal. She will receive the Agriculture Minister’s Krishi Samman for Progressive Farmers from the Union agriculture ministry later this year.

The  Financial Express

Crop yield is influenced by the genetic traits of seeds, as also by factors like composition of the soil, organic matter, presence of beneficial microbes, moisture, temperature, nutrients, and crop protection measures.

The Times of India

Punjab government on Friday offered special training camps for farmers and officers of the border state of Jammu and Kashmir to facilitate technical exchange for agriculture. Interacting with a group of farmers of Akhnoor Tehsil, who are touring Punjab as part of Indian Army’s Operation Sadbhavna, senior advisor to CM, Lt Gen (Retd) T S Shergill, asked director agriculture, Punjab, to coordinate with his Jammu Kashmir counterpart and devise a mechanism for holding focussed programmes for farmers at Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) Ludhiana at the earliest.

The Economic Times (ET Health)

With Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled Cloud solutions, the country is now looking at solving real-life problems in sectors like agriculture, healthcare and education. Experts believe that the country needs to prioritise AI-based predictive analysis to improve outcomes in these core areas that touch millions of lives. When it comes to agriculture, India has now embarked on a journey to bring AI sensors into the fields. “We are working with farmers, state governments, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare to create an ecosystem for AI into farming,” Maheshwari told IANS recently.