TCI Blog

Examining the Indian nutrition transition: Reducing the risks for obesity by 2050

Posted on August 21, 2019

In the last 20 years, undernutrition as measured by stunting and underweight has been decreasing for children under five in India, but the progress towards its complete elimination has been slow. In the NFHS 2015-16, 38% of all children remained stunted and 29% were un… Read more

Aquaculture and fish-focused internship yield net gains

Posted on August 15, 2019

Summer internships offer students experiential learning opportunities “that enhance and complement their career goals and academic progress, while enriching their undergraduate experience with diverse cultural and international immersion.” The Tata-Corne… Read more

For Prabhu Pingali, India’s malnutrition puzzle is personal

Posted on July 31, 2019

It has been a long journey for Prabhu Pingali. After more than 40 years studying agriculture and food systems across the developing world, the founder of the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition is now focusing full time on his native India, trying t… Read more

Promoting equitable growth for 2050

Posted on July 23, 2019

As of 2018, India has become the sixth largest economy in the world displacing France from this position and nearly tying with the United Kingdom. While there is cause to celebrate, there are two major concerns about India’s growth experience. The first has been a well d… Read more

IFPRI book launch: Transforming food systems for a rising India

Posted on June 14, 2019

Despite broad economic progress, India continues to face persistent food insecurity, malnutrition, and high levels of stunting. This paradox is at the center of a new book by researchers at the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition, Transforming Fo… Read more

Tata-Cornell Institute’s co-authors launch new book on food systems in India

Posted on May 30, 2019

Co-authors from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition and the Dyson School have published a new book, Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India, as a reflection of the institute’s key intellectual results and research works undertaken within… Read more

Op-Ed: We’ll Be What We Eat

Posted on May 14, 2019

With a five-fold increase in food grain production since 1947, India has moved away from its dependence on food aid to become a net food exporter. However, the country still shares a quarter of the global hunger burden. By 2011, India had been able to achieve the 2000 UN-s… Read more

Podcast shows how piped-in water changes lives

Posted on May 8, 2019

The latest episode of the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast series, explains the impact of clean, piped-in water on women and girls in India. A recording and transcript of the podcast is available here. This story originally appeared in the Cornell Chronicle. Pho… Read more

‘Clean Water’ – a podcast episode on what makes us human

Posted on May 6, 2019

This is an episode from the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast’s fourth season, “What Does Water Mean for Us Humans?” from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences. Prof. Prabhu Pingali explains the impact of clean, piped-in water on women and girls in India. Re… Read more

Solving the complimentary feeding gap in infants using novel food technology

Posted on April 1, 2019

The food industry has always succeeded in adding novel food products to supermarket shelves, according to the needs and demands of consumers. In recent years, food scientists and industry researchers have focused on adding convenience and ease of utilization in foo… Read more

Fortification to tackle iron deficient anemia – Evidence from a community-based nutrition program in Gujarat

Posted on March 19, 2019

Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) is one of the most frequent nutritional disorders, affecting up to 1.6 billion people worldwide [i]. Bioavailable iron is essential to synthesize hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein. The shortage of iron depletes hemoglobi… Read more

Antibiotic Resistance: Fighting a Multi-Headed Demon

Posted on March 4, 2019

The direct public health ramifications of antibiotic resistance are truly enormous, with estimated losses in hundreds of millions of lives and trillions of dollars, when accounting for prolonged illness, death, production losses and negative impacts on food secu… Read more

Collecting time use data: Accelerometers or survey methods?

Posted on February 5, 2019

How people spend their time can influence their health, nutrition, and income. However, accurately measuring time use can be very challenging. In this blog, Vidya S.R. Vemireddy, a PhD candidate in applied economics at the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture an… Read more

Why agricultural income growth is critical for young women’s nutrition

Posted on August 22, 2018

Much academic and policy interest has been generated in recent years to understand how the agricultural sector can be leveraged to address problems of malnutrition in developing countries. For improving nutrition among women in particular, agriculture─nutrit… Read more

Interacting with value chain actors: What to do when your research subjects have work to do

Posted on August 20, 2018

Levels of food loss are product and value chain specific. An important first step in determining methods and metrics to evaluate food loss of perishables was to identify the product (or products) and map the value chains. The objective of my fieldwork this summer was to… Read more

Micronutrient transmission from soils to humans

Posted on August 10, 2018

They say “we are what we eat” but can it be that we are what the soil is? Soil forms the foundation of the food we eat. It also serves as the main reservoir of the water we drink, making it the sole source of nutrients taken-in by humans. Naturally, one could argue that the fate o… Read more

Farmers’ decision making and perceived benefits of orange-fleshed sweet potato adoption

Posted on July 23, 2018

“He says orange-fleshed sweet potato has made his family healthier,” my translator, Shaktikar says as I scribble notes in a small notebook. I make sure not to disturb the iPhone pointed towards the farmer we’re interviewing. It is recording every word it can over the so… Read more

Congratulations to our graduates!

Posted on June 1, 2018

We are proud to celebrate the individuals graduating from the Tata-Cornell program: Maureen Valentine and Prankur Gupta.Maureen ValentineDr. Maureen Valentine graduated with her Ph.D. in Animal Science from Cornell University’s Department of Animal Science at… Read more

A Current Scenario of India’s Fight against Undernourishment

Posted on April 12, 2018

In this interview, SPANDAN speaks with Dr. Soumya Gupta, Research Economist at TCI-TARINA, on the prevailing condition of undernourishment in India. She mentions the factors that are lagging behind for addressing the problem and stresses the need for the coming t… Read more

New food for better health: Introducing orange sweet potato to Uttar Pradesh

Posted on April 10, 2018

On a bright, windy morning in the rural district of Maharajganj, Sunita Devi listens for the crackling of cumin seeds in hot mustard oil, then adds a heap of chopped onions and garlic to the pan, smiling as they begin to sizzle and brown. She is trying out a new recipe, using… Read more

Can social marketing be a path towards improved nutrition?

Posted on March 26, 2018

The Tata-Cornell Institute (TCI) has been running an iron flour fortification program in a tribal community in Gujarat. It uses the principles of social marketing to generate awareness about the importance of iron and other micronutrients, and consequentially aim… Read more

The Role of Women in Water Projects in India

Posted on March 8, 2018

Our partner AguaClara Reach is increasing access to safe drinking water on tap through simple, affordable, gravity-powered technologies. The Tata-Cornell Institute supports their expansion into eastern India (and you can too!). Learn more about women’s signi… Read more

Making adolescent girls a priority, not an afterthought, in the global health debate

Posted on March 5, 2018

“In global health, we talk a lot about neglected diseases like onchocerciasis and schistosomiasis—serious ailments that most people have never heard of. But a condition that everybody is perfectly aware of, malnutrition, may be the most neglected health problem in… Read more

Bridging the gap: Soil health in Ithaca and India, from lab to field to lab

Posted on February 21, 2018

Bihar, 2018:The thick fog blanketed the city making it impossible to see any of the buildings down below. I’d been warned of the trouble with fog in the northern part of India but the inability to see anything beyond a few meters ahead of me was not something I was prepared f… Read more

Building capacity for project monitoring, evaluation, and learning among a wide range of organizations and stakeholders

Posted on February 20, 2018

TCI’s TARINA Center of Excellence in New Delhi provides capacity building on project monitoring and evaluation (M&E) to senior- and mid-level managers of organizations interested in advancing data-based solutions for development effectiveness. Recently,… Read more