On a brilliantly sunny day in June in Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor district, red-ripe tomatoes shine like ornaments in a field of green. Seemingly absent is anyone harvesting these fruits that are just waiting to be plucked, sold, and consumed. Left untouched, they will overripen and fall to the soil. After all the investment and care…

Good, healthy soils are not only critical for crop production, they are also crucial for good nutrition. Soils high in mineral content produce crops with higher levels of those nutrients. Yet in developing countries like India, which struggles to provide its population with nutritious food, there seems to be no real market among farmers for…

The Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI), Cornell Cinema, and the Cornell University South Asia Program are co-sponsoring a virtual screening of Kalira Atita (Yesterday’s Past), an acclaimed film exploring the human impact of climate change in India. Members of the Cornell University community can screen the film from April 9-15 on the Cornell Cinema website. Kalira Atita is based on…

The Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) is co-hosting a webinar on “Gender, Nutrition, and Agriculture” on Thursday, April 8, at 8 a.m. EDT/5:30 p.m. IST. The event is the third in a series of policy discussions on food, nutrition, and agriculture in India organized by TCI, the Coalition for Food & Nutrition Security, and BAIF Development Research…

The COVID-19 pandemic has revolutionized the face of field research in the era of mobile phones and the internet. While in-person interviews provide an opportunity to researchers for extensive interactions with participants in any study, to reduce the risk of viral transmission, some researchers have resorted to using phone surveys as a cost-effective method for data…

Researchers from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) say that programs aimed at improving nutritional outcomes in rural India must account for how the time constraints imposed on women by domestic and agricultural work affect their nutritional status. In a new study published in Food Policy, TCI alumna Vidya Vemireddy and TCI Director Prabhu Pingali demonstrate that when women spend…

A new study from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI) reveals a significant risk of mycotoxin exposure from staple food commodities in Unnao, India, that warrants targeted food safety interventions to avoid adverse health outcomes. Mycotoxins are naturally occurring toxins produced by certain types of mold that can grow on a variety of crops and…

The haze of pollution that settles over Delhi, India, has many sources directly in the city, such as the more than 10 million cars that drive on its roads. But some of the smog comes from hundreds of miles away, where twice a year, rice farmers burn the stubble or straw left over after harvesting…

Adequate spacing between births can help to alleviate the likelihood of stunting in children, according to a new study from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI). In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, TCI postdoctoral associate Sunaina Dhingra and Director Prabhu Pingali find that differences in height between…

The least-expensive healthy diet recommended by the EAT-Lancet Commission costs up to five times as much as what Indians currently spend, according to new research from the Tata-Cornell Institute for Agriculture and Nutrition (TCI). In a study published in Global Food Security, TCI researchers demonstrate that while Indians eat a diet that costs roughly $1 per day, the EAT-Lancet diet…