B M Zaffer Thonse Chairman Thonse Health Centre (Nature cure and Ayurveda hospital) has been selected for the prestigious Indian Achievers Award-2021 by the Indian Achievers’ Forum for his outstanding professional achievements and contributions in national building.
Zaffer is a known businessman from UAE and the award is given for recognizing his excellence in business, health sector and social activities.
He is a storehouse of knowledge on Indian trees, plants and herbs, and in his farm, which is nothing like the traditional setup, the flora grows wildly and naturally.
The farm has over 300 species of plants and trees, all either edible or used for medicinal purposes.
Srivathsa Govindaraju, a software engineer-turned-farmer, started his farm 13 years ago with the intent of “respecting nature as it is and to understand how it functions”.
Joseph Lobo, a 44-yr-old farmer, is popularising the hydroponic method of cultivation and is growing the famous Shankarapura jasmine.
They say a farmer is a magician who makes his living from the mud. But that is not true in the case of Joseph Lobo, a 44-year-old farmer from the coastal district of Udupi.Lobo hails from Shankarapura, a tiny nondescript village sandwiched between the mighty Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea. Shankarapura is called the jasmine capital of the Karnataka coastline and is famous for its Shankarapura mallige (mallige in Kannada means jasmine flowers). And like the majority of the residents of the village, Lobo too cultivates Shankarapura mallige. A passionate farmer, Lobo has been growing the Shankarapura mallige — which was accorded GI tag in 2008 — for the last 15 years.
But what sets him apart from the rest of the growers is that he has attempted to grow his prized possession without soil! Yes, you read it right. Lobo became the first grower in the region to adopt the novel hydroponic method of cultivation, which in layman’s language is soil-less cultivation.Lobo says he was inspired after attending a workshop at University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bengaluru, and started experimenting on the new method of cultivation. Lobo has 32 jasmine plants already, including the three grown using the hydroponic technique.
For the devout, Bengaluru’s cosmopolitan culturescape provides various calm retreats. Many church spires have stood testimony to its tryst with the British Raj, with a few institutions dating bck centuries.
One such quaint, yet magnificent institution — St Matthew’s Church — tucked inside the MG Railway Colony on Magadi Road in Bengaluru, has enriched the lives of people, while also providing them a spiritual sanctuary during troubled times. This Protestant CSI church, which was consecrated on November 10, 1896, by the Bishop of Madras, is a part of Railway history in Bengaluru.
The Zoology Museum at Karnatak College, Dharwad, where rare exhibits, including 2,500 specimens of animals and birds, are on display, has now got a spacious new premises. The new facility was inaugurated on Friday.
Inaugurating the new building, Vice-Chancellor of Karnatak University K.B. Gudasi said that the Zoology Museum was nothing but a treasure trove for degree and research students.
Prof. Gudasi said that the museum, a one-of-its-kind in the State, had over 2,500 specimens of animals and birds that have been preserved in pristine condition. “A curator too has been appointed for the museum to provide information to research students and students should make use of the facility,” he said.
In a green milestone, the first fleet of electric buses and BS-VI diesel standard buses hit the city’s road on Monday. With this, the long wait for green public transport of seven years has come to an end.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai flagged off the State’s first batch of these buses deployed on a long-term basis on Monday morning and the buses hit the streets making their maiden trips later in the day.
COVID-19 has put the focus on zoonotic disease like nothing else did before. The bigger issue here, Mahesh Sankaran from National Center For Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bengaluru says, is habitat loss, fragmentation and degradation.
Prof. Sankaran was awarded the Infosys Prize 2021 in the Life Sciences category in recognition of his work on the ecology of tropical savanna ecosystems, and his contributions to highlighting the biodiversity of important Indian ecosystems such as the Western Ghats.
Yashas Narayan, one of the most reputed wildlife photographers of India. It would be prudent to say that he is one of the best big cat trackers that India has seen. Proudly known for his astonishing and mesmerising portfolio of India’s tigers, leopards, and black panthers, he is now the first Indian wildlife photographer to get a feature film made by the Discovery networks.
Titled “Eye to Eye With a Tiger”, Yashas got an opportunity to lead a team of highly dedicated professionals to capture the serenity amidst the short lives in the modern world. Partnering with the World Wildlife Fund to support Project CAT, Discovery’s collaboration aims to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022 by spreading awareness about deforestation, poaching, and overhunting of the tigers’ prey. Similarly, Samsung has sponsored this film to raise awareness about Project CAT.
Two enterprising youth deploy eight kayaks in the Seetha backwaters at Parampalli.
Two youngsters from Kodi in the vicinity of Parampalli near Saligrama have procured as many as eight kayaks investing close to ₹4.5 lakh on their own to take tourists amidst the lush mangroves.
While the backwater formed by Seetha is about 8 km long, Lokesh and Mithun, the entrepreneurs, take tourists for about 3+3 km ride in about two hours.
Karnataka has ordered that no agricultural land measuring less than 5 guntas, or 5,445 sq ft, can get a survey number. This means such small parcels can neither be bought nor sold.