GLOBAL WARMING AND THE BASMATI RICE- INDIA TO LOSE DOMINANCE?

Here is a dooms day prediction by some agricultural scientists in India regarding the catastrophic consequences of global warming on Indian export of its much vaunted Basmati Rice. On the face of it the logical deductions made by them appear to be worth considering seriously. According to their assumptions, one of their failed experiments in the past had to encounter temperatures higher than normal for the season which probably could have resulted in reduced length of the grain and lower levels of the typical aroma.

According to them their experiment indicated a definite influence higher environmental temperature could have on the fragrance of this rice variety besides affecting its length. The crop obtained in their experiments did not grow long enough and was not as fragrant as it should have been when cooked. Temperatures during that year crossed 26 degree Celsius in September when the basmati flowers and, 15 to 20 days later, when the grain begins to fill out, because of which a shriveling of the grain was seen. The extra heat, it was hypothesized, prevented the food stored by the plant from travelling to the grain. Consequently, it failed to grow to the right length. The heat also could have destroyed fatty acids stored in the grain which give the basmati its distinct fragrance when cooked. Though more than 3 years have lapsed since this finding no field studies have yet been done so far by the agriculture scientists in ICAR the premier research agency in the country.

Basmati rice is a priced commodity of India with 80% of the world trade controlled by it. According to the authentic report of APEDA the vested authority that controls food exports from India, the export during 2009-10 was 2.01 mt valued at Rs 100 billion. It is a matter of pride for India that Basmati is the only commodity from the country being exported to more than 110 countries around the world. While rice exports suffer from time to time depending on production and local availability of this staple in any given year, Basmati export has enjoyed a steady growth over the years due to expanding areas of cultivation and steady policy of support and encouragement from the government.

It was in 1997 that India had the shock of facing a crisis in its Basmati monopoly when a private player in the US sought patent rights for the name Basmati claiming that it has developed a better variety through genetic improvement. Fortunately sustained efforts by the government and the agricultural scientists in fighting this threat resulted in not granting any patent rights to that party. The loss to India and Pakistan which enjoy almost 100% monopoly as far s Basmati is concerned would have suffered grievously if the patenting attempt of the American developer were to succeed.

There are more than two dozen varieties.of Basmati being grown in India that include Dehradun, Safidon, Haryana, Kasturi, Pusa, Ranbir, Suganda etc all being long grains with typical flavor due to presence of the volatile fragrance fraction 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline. There are also varieties designated with numbers and some of the popular ones are 198, 217, 370, 385 and 386. Though Basmati rice is more known for its scent, it is also a good cooking variety capable of retaining its texture without getting mushy. Besides it is a medium GI grain with a range of 55-65 that can ensure uniform release of glucose after consumption. The reported effect of global warming if confirmed by field studies under controlled conditions must be taken seriously and appropriate pre-emptive action must be considered to prevent any damage to India's long term strategy of retaining supremacy in this area. If warmer temperatures can affect Basmati varieties, what about its effect on normal rice strains? Will the yield go down or will there be change in the nutritional and eating qualities of normal rice? Answers must be found for these questions as India cannot afford to let any uncertainty affect its staple cereal on which millions of its population depend.

V.H.POTTY

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THE DICHOTOMY OF OZONE-SAVIOUR OR A TORMENTOR?

Global warming is often attributed to more generation of green house gases like CO2, Nitrous Oxide, Methane and depletion of ozone in the stratosphere. Green house gases, each containing a minimum of 3 component atoms, absorb infrared radiation from earth's surface, vibrate and re-emit the radiation absorbed by them. This absorption-emission-absorption cycle in the lower atmosphere is supposed to keep heat near the surface of the earth and insulate against the cold of the space. Ozone is formed high in the atmosphere when intense light from the sun, especially ultra violet-B light with wave length of 280-315 nm, causes oxygen to break into constituent atoms and reform as ozone molecules which shield people, trees, crops, property and microbes from the harmful effects of UV light from the sun. Green house effect ensures earth's temperature is maintained at comfortable levels but too much of these emissions can heat up the surface of this planet to unbearable levels which is not desirable. A 2C rise in earth's temperature is considered to be lethal to 30% of the living creatures on this planet

Green house effect of gases and vapors vary considerably with water vapor being the most efficient one with 36-72% while CO2 contributes to 9-26%, Methane 4-9% and ozone 3-7%. During the last one and a half century the concentration of these gases has increased dramatically mostly due to human activity. CO2 level recorded an increase from 280 ppm to 387 ppm, Methane 700 ppb to 1745 ppb, NO 270 ppb to 314 ppb and Chlorofluoro Carbon from zero to 533 ppt. CO2 emission increase is mostly due to burning of fossil fuels for a variety of tasks in the modern world including energy generation, automobile running, industrial operations etc. Massive deforestation taking place around the world reduces the 'sink' effect trees have, by converting CO2 into carbohydrates through photosynthesis, allowing the gas to stay for long time in the atmosphere causing increased heat radiation. Though the temperature rise was only 1 C during the last one century, its effect on life has been phenomenal. Further rise of 2 C during this century is predicted which can have disastrous consequences if not checked in time,

Ozone, besides its role as a protectant against UV radiation reaching earth's surface, is also a green house gas. Ozone layer in the stratosphere, 10-50 km above earth's surface, acts as a shield and is considered good and beneficial. This layer absorbs 93-99 % of sun's high frequency UV light and the ozone content here is around 2-8 ppm. Any drastic reduction of ozone can cause increased radiation hazard to the population and hence to be avoided. Free radical catalysts like NO, hydroxyls, atomic bromine and chlorine generated by human activity can destroy ozone significantly. Chlorine and Bromine atoms are liberated by the action of UV light on man made chemicals like Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) or Bromofluorocarbons and each radical has the potential to destroy 100,000 molecules of ozone. The present depletion rate is about 4% a decade and international community is taking action to phase out the use of these halogenated gases over a period of time. Other industrial gases like Halon, Carbon Tetrachloride, Methyl Chloroform etc extensively used in consumer products and industrial applications are also under the scanner to phase them out eventually so that the 'good ozone" is protected.


Presence of ozone in earth's atmosphere is considered bad as they cause shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, headache, nausea, throat and lung irritation. Here again the background ozone concentration formed by a series of atmospheric chemical reactions involving nitrous oxide and volatile organic compounds (VOC), if kept at low levels, may not be dangerous. When ground level ozone levels go up, it can affect plant life as well as the human beings as it is a photochemical oxidant. VOCs are invariably generated by gasoline stations, motor vehicles, airplanes, trains, boats, petroleum tankers, oil refineries and higher their levels in the air more will be the formation of ozone. Ozone is a key component in the smog that reduces visibility during summer months. Strong sun light and hot weather conditions cause ground level ozone to form in harmful concentrations in the air.

There is natural generation of ozone due to some plants which produce biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOC)like mono terpenes and isoprenes in significant amounts that can react with ozone precursors to form ozone at ground level. This has posed a dilemma to policy makers regarding the negative aspects of urban forestry when high biogenic hydocarbon emitting trees are planted in urban areas as CO2 sink as well as for their cooling effect. High BVOC emitting trees include Casuarina, Eucalyptus, Poplar, Oak, Willow etc. However BVOC emission accounts for only about 10% of the total VOCs generated and urban forestry is still an attractive proposition from CO2, ozone and temperature angles and if low BVOC emitting plants are chosen ozone problem may not be that significant. Ozone formation due to reaction between NO and VOCs is temperature dependent and higher the temperature more will be the ozone generation. A mature tree on an average can absorb about 22-23 kg of CO2 in an year and a 10% increase in urban canopy can reduce ozone levels by 4 ppm besides reducing the temperature by 4-5C. Ground level ozone beyond 0.075 ppm is considered undesirable in many countries.


V.H.POTTY
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WORLD DOES NOT LIKE A WINNER!

Competition is a part and parcel of life and it is an irrefutable fact that in any competition there can be only one real winner. Good sprotsmanship calls for cheering the winner, the underlying philosophy being 'participation is more important than winning'. How many takers are there for this logic? Probably very few!. Losers have always the excuse for not winning and in many competitions winning by 'hook or crook' is the main motto. But playing the winning-losing game with economic issues is not justified as is being done by powerful vested interests in the industrialized countries in hitting the palm oil industry in the south Asian countries like Malaysia and Indonesia.

Palm oil is, no doubt, a food material with predominant levels of saturated triglycerides and western countries frowned upon its use for human consumption on health considerations. It was in eighties of the last millennium that a sustained campaign was started to brand palm oil as an unhealthy oil, with great potential for causing hypercholesterolemia, CVD and obesity. It took enormous efforts by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council to debunk these claims through systematic health studies involving some of the very best nutritionists in the world and it turned out palm oil can be a healthy oil, equal to other edible oils, if not better. Oil Palm growing countries also invested in technological improvements to offer more healthy products like red palm oil, palmolein and palm kernel oil. To day oils derived from Oil Palm are the most economical ones, finding extensive use in thousands of processed foods. With an annual production of 43 million tons, accounting for almost 40% of total world edible oil production, palm oil really has reached commanding heights on its own strength. Even in USA with its powerful soybean oil lobby, 1 in 10 food products on the retail market there contains palm oil and their annual consumption is more than 1 million tons.

Now comes the second wave of attack on palm oil with a few western based multi national companies alleging that palm oil is not a "green oil" because they are produced by large scale deforestation of forests which is cause for high emission of CO2, the villain that heats up our globe! They have even formed a union involving MNCs like Uniliver, L'real, Colgate, Tesco etc fancifully called Round Table On Sustainable Palm Oil with the avowed purpose of stopping deforestation of jungles in Malaysia and Indonesia and encouraging production of sustainable oil so that they can completely switch over to its use by 2015. What is amusing about this charade is that they are least concerned about auto emission by millions of petrol guzzling vehicles in their own countries which happen to be the major cause of green house effect in this planet! They are also forgetting that forests are mass destroyed in Brazil for the cultivation of sugarcane, not for human consumption but for running their automobiles. If palm oil cultivation is done in deforested areas, the organized planting of palm trees on the same land provides some green cover in no time, providing a CO2 sink there.

It is a tragedy that rich countries do not appreciate the tremendous efforts put in by the counties in South East Asia in raising the productivity of palm oil in their lands making it the most economical commercially produced edible oil, affordable to millions of low income families across the word. Palm oil yield per hectare is more than double that of coconut oil and 10 times that of canola and soybean oil. All kudos to the major producer nations who made this possible. In stead of encouraging such endeavors, the level field for logical commercial competition in the global market landscape, is being vitiated for extraneous considerations. It is a challenge the developing countries like Malaysia and Indonesia must meet squarely with the help of other fair minded nations and thwart the attempts to malign their image in the world in the name of 'sustainable agriculture'.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/

TRAVAILS OF COOKING IN THE THIRD WORLD!

Rampant poverty that is prevalent in the third world countries deprives many people of minimally required food materials for survival at affordable cost making the life miserable for these unfortunate denizens. On top of it cooking of food presents even more acute problems of availability and cost. Now comes another challenge in the form of their precious cook stoves which are being blamed for global warming.

The on-going debate about the need to control green house gas emissions focuses too much on CO2 though there is an awareness about other contributing factors like methanogenesis and similar emissions having adverse effect on environment. Fossil fuels considered unsustainable for long have been the main villain and new developments were taking place to switch over to more sustainable energy systems based on sources like Solar, Geothermal, Wind, Waves etc. There has to be a convergence of the goals between these two laudable efforts and future is going to belong to the strategy that will ensure clean and sustainable power. The Kyoto Protocol which sets the limit for global temperature rise to 2C by the end of this century is scheduled to expire by 2012 and a successor to this treaty is being negotiated under the UN auspices. Many climate scientists believe that this planet will see a rise in temperature as much as 4-6C this century unless remedial measures are taken now.

Black Carbon (BC) is receiving increasing attention from the climatologists for its role in global warming and the major contributors are China and India accounting up to 35% of the world-wide BC emission. BC is generated as a result of incomplete combustion of carbon sources like fossil fuels, bio fuels and biomass. According to some estimates 42% of BC emission globally comes from biomass burning in the open while 18% is generated in the house-holds where bio fuels like firewood is burned to cook food and heat water. BC warms the planet by absorbing heat in the atmosphere and by reducing albedo, the ability to reflect sunlight when they settle over the ice in glaciers. Unlike CO2 emissions which can travel far and wide and stay in the atmosphere for 100 years, BC does not linger in the atmosphere for more than a few weeks. BC emanating from diesel and coal burning in many developed countries is more or less under control due to mandatory environmental restrictions on emission of particulates including BC. More than 50% of Arctic warming has been attributed to BC which can be stopped within a short time by controlling BC emissions. 75% of Himalayan glaciers are expected to lose the ice before 2020 if BC emission is not curtailed or eliminated.

A demand is now being made on the developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America to cut down on BC emissions by replacing traditional cook stoves with modern ones with better combustion efficiency and reduced emission of smoke. The logic is that there are hundreds of millions of such stoves being used in the rural areas where bio fuel is the only source of heating to cook food and their combined output of BC can be very significant. Besides the smoke has adverse effects on the health of children with ailments involving eyes, reproductive system and lungs. It is estimated than more than 1.6 million deaths occur world-wide due to toxic indoor pollution, about 6 lakh deaths reported in India alone. In most of the developing countries 50% of the energy consumed goes for cooking of foods in traditional stoves or chulhas as they are called. An an average family spends about 20% of its income on purchase of firewood or charcoal. Under such a scenario, replacement of these stoves in such large numbers is going to be an herculean task.

Modern chulhas are designed in such a way they can use powdered or briquetted bio fuels and with the aid of a small fan or natural draught provided by a chimney, combustion can be more efficient with more than 80% reduction in smoke emission. There are a number of designs and manufacturers supplying such chulhas costing from Rs 500 to Rs 2000. The National Program on Improved Chulha (INPIC) under the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES) has done a yeomen service to the country as well as the world by promoting smokeless chulhas during the last several years and millions of such chulhas are claimed to have been supplied across the country's rural backyard, saving substantial quantity of fire woods. Realizing the potential benefits in replacement of traditional cook stoves for the entire world, USA is extending aid for introducing modified cook stoves, costing less than $ 20, in 20 million households in the third world countries which can achieve 90% reduction in BC emission. While controlling BC emission is a laudable objective, poor people in the third world should not be the one bearing the 'cross', considering that major culprits like some of the industrialized nations are not even signatories to the much touted Kyoto Protocol, signaling their intention not to share the sacrifice required to save this planet.

V.H.POTTY
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CARBON DIOXIDE-A FRIENDLY 'FOE'

Carbon dioxide(CO2), one of the naturally occurring gases in the atmosphere, is blamed by the environmentalists for the dreaded global warming phenomenon being faced by the modern world. It is true that CO2 is omnipotent because all living creatures inhale oxygen and exhale CO2 every second without which life is not possible. Plants absorb CO2 during day time to fix solar energy and synthesise starch using chlorophyll pigments present in green leaves. Normally atmospheric air contains 21% Oxygen, 0.038% Carbon Dioxide and 78% Nitrogen. Major sources of CO2 emission are fossil fuels which are burned to generate energy for driving modern civilization. Kyoto Protocol on green house gases calls on all countries to reduce these emissions in order to save the world from disaster due to uncontrollable and undesirable weather changes. Viewed from this angle CO2 is indeed a villain but branding this gas as such ignores the beneficial role it plays in many spheres of life to day.

The omnipotent fire extinguisher that is a part of to day's civil infrastructure is based on the principle that CO2 is a fire retardant and the soda-acid fire extinguishers generate CO2 that can be directed at the fire. As a refrigerant, dry ice or solid CO2 has no parallel as it is a clean refrigerant leaving no residue once sublimed. The temperature of pure dry ice is minus 109.8F which can be further lowered by mixing powdered dry ice with ether or acetone to minus 220F. CO2 is one of the raw materials in the manufacture of the most popular fertilizer Urea. CO2 under pressure is also widely used as a cleansing agent in many industries.

Food industry owes a lot to CO2 for its diverse portfolio of products. Most common use, as a common man can see, is in the manufacture of aerated drinks where the fizz is provided by this gas. CO2 under pressure and at low temperatures dissolves in aqueous phase lowering the pH and providing an atmosphere that inhibits almost all living contaminants in the product. Technologies like Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP), Controlled Atmosphere Storage (CAS), Equilibrium Modified Atmosphere Packing (eMAP), Modified Atmosphere/Modified Humidity Packing (MA/MH) owe their strength to the presence of CO2 in the gas mixture that protects commodities under ambient as well as reduced temperature conditions. CO2 at just 80% cause hypercarbia while Nitrogen beyond 98% concentration leads to hypoxia conditions, both inimical to most living things including microorganisms. CAS was being used since 1930 for transportation of fruits over long distances while MAP became prominent in 1970 for Bacon and Fish transport. To day MAP is widely used for distributing products like red meat, sea food, minimally processed fruits and vegetables, cheese, pasta, bakery goods, poultry, cooked and cured products, ready meats and dried foods. It is estimated that 25-40% of all fresh produce harvested does not reach the consumer table due to spoilage and emergence of the above technologies helps to reduce the waste to the minimum where CO2 plays a very significant role.

While meat and fish require very low gas permeability films or high barrier packing materials as they are non-respiring in nature, fruits and vegetables, being actively respiring and transpiring, call for use of films with certain permeability characteristics to allow for diffusion of O2 and CO2 for establishing equilibrium. They need O2 for respiration and emit CO2 as a by-product. Build up of too much CO2 can adversely affect the sensory quality of the product packed and that calls for its diffusion out of the pack. Depletion of O2 is also to be avoided and there fore O2 entry into such packs at desired rate is also necessary. There are excellent packaging materials available to day thanks to the innovative efforts of the packaging industry, meeting every need of the food packers. Both gas flushing and compensated vacuum methods are deployed in packing foods under MAP system. O2 levels of 3-5%, CO2 levels of 10% and rest N2 can be effective for packing fruits and vegetables. CO2 at concentrations of 10% or less is considered most effective in killing all microbes and pests. Grains stored under CO2 can stay in good shape for more than 5 years.

CO2 is a by-product of alcohol fermentation and is available in plenty, waiting to be harnessed for use by the food industry. In baking industry CO2 is an essential tool to impart the desired texture to the baked products. Baking powder, based on sodium bicarbonate and tartaric acid or calcium hydrogen phosphate which generates CO2 on heating is an integral part of the bakery industry and millions of kitchens around the world. The loaf volume, texture and other qualities of the bread are imparted by CO2 generated by yeast under aerobic conditions. The Super Critical CO2 Fluid Extraction Technology (SCFE), the high end process developed some time back has enabled the industry to obtain concentrated and purified products from flavor bearing materials like spices, herbs and aromatic plants. The decaffeinated coffee is made to day mostly by the SCFE technology which does not affect adversely the delicate flavor constituents present in coffee, unlike the solvent extraction technology and Caffeine is obtained as a valuable by-product.

Since the world is fighting against uncontrolled build up of CO2 to protect the environment, it is certainly an adversary but considering the diverse beneficial uses it has in the day day to day lives of people, CO2 is also a friendly partner that sustains the human civilization.

V.H.POTTY
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