Cooking
Dolna pitha: a soft steamed rice cake with date molasses and coconut
Rice flour, milk, date molasses and coconut make a soft dolna pitha at home, steamed for about ten minutes.
Latest
Latest news
CropsIKEA, Royal Canin and Yara back regenerative farming, but who pays remains open
Executives from IKEA, Royal Canin and Yara told a forum in Beijing that regenerative agriculture has proved itself in pilots, but no one has settled who carries the cost and risk of scaling it up.
EnvironmentSummer heatwaves left half of Europe breathing unsafe ozone, Copernicus finds
The EU's atmosphere monitoring service says 50% of Europeans faced poor or worse ground-level ozone from June to August, as heat and wildfires drove a pollutant that is also a greenhouse gas and harms crops.
Health
Calcium and vitamin D supplements show no clear cut in fractures, BMJ analysis finds
An analysis of 69 controlled trials covering 153,902 adults found no significant evidence that the supplements cut fractures or falls in most older people; the researchers say no one should stop a prescribed supplement without a doctor's advice.
Environment
Pruned for a water pipeline, Rajshahi's flame-tree avenue turns green again
About 100 krishnachura trees between Dayrapak and Nader Hajir Mor lost their branches last December for WASA pipe-laying; new shoots have grown in a few months, though one tree has died.
Livestock
At Chattogram's Dewanhat bird market, a rooster can fetch up to Tk 10,000
Held twice a week, the market sells Heza, Bahma, Hoyai, Japanese Bantam, Modern Game and other breeds; a rooster costs Tk 1,000 to Tk 10,000 depending on breed.
Daily life
New TCB rules: farm workers, day labourers and women-headed families get cards
Under the commerce ministry's 2026 guideline each card-holding family gets two litres of edible oil, two kilograms of lentils, one kilogram of sugar and, subject to allocation, five kilograms of rice; only one person per family may benefit.
CookingCakes from the home kitchen: Dhaka's home bakers turn a hobby into income
Worries about food safety and inspiration from social media are driving a rise in home baking in Dhaka, where home bakers take orders from their own kitchens with little start-up capital.
CookingFour cold coffees to make at home, from iced latte to matcha
Four simple recipes from cook Mita Azhar for iced latte, cold brown coffee, cold cappuccino and matcha cold coffee, made with ingredients found in most kitchens.
LivestockTwo roaming dogs killed 47 lambs on a Wairarapa station; the owner must pay NZ$7,000
Glenburn Station lost 43 lambs outright and four more had to be put down; the Carterton council won a Dog Control Act prosecution and is seeking the longest ban it can on the owner keeping dogs.
HealthPCOS is not infertility: doctors call for joined-up care and a national registry
Polycystic ovary syndrome carries long-term hormonal and metabolic risks beyond fertility, so care should combine gynaecology, endocrinology, nutrition and mental health and be affordable, specialists told a Samakal round table.
OpinionOpinion: gas import dependence squeezes fertiliser plants ahead of boro
Journalist and columnist Hasan Mamun writes in Samakal that falling domestic gas output has deepened reliance on LNG and LPG imports; fertiliser factories cannot run properly for want of gas, with the input-hungry boro season approaching.
CropsHawke's Bay growers push a NZ$225 million dam to end a decade of capped water
A 58-metre rockfill dam at Whanawhana on the Ngaruroro River would store 27 million cubic metres of winter flow for the Heretaunga Plains, where 18,000 hectares are irrigated and water has been fully allocated since 2016.
Agribusiness
Australian meat plant cuts its gas use by about 30% by recycling refrigeration heat
Gundagai Meat Processors preheats boiler water with waste heat from its refrigeration plant, saving about A$135,000 a year on a A$450,000 system and avoiding a new boiler.
Agribusiness
Bangladesh's first crocodile farm has exported no skins for six years
The NGO Uddipan bought the Bhaluka farm at auction but has no Forest Department licence in its name, so about 400 export-ready skins cannot be sold; no exports are recorded since 2019.
FisheriesPatiya stocks 47 institutional ponds with 250 kg of disease-free carp fingerlings
Under a revenue-budget programme, the upazila fisheries office gave 10 to 15 cm rohu, catla, mrigal and kalibaus fingerlings to ponds of institutions in the municipality and unions.
CropsFarmer card phase two opens Thursday with Tk 2,500 in input support each
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is to launch the second pilot phase at Fulgazi in Feni; 100,047 farmers are to receive money on their cards to buy farm inputs.
CropsCanadian grain groups call for a plant breeding strategy that serves every crop
Producer organisations want renewed multi-year federal funding before public breeding money lapses in 2028, especially for crops private breeders overlook.
AgrotechCibus and Crystal Crop Protection to develop gene-edited mustard for India
The US gene-editing firm and the Indian crop company will develop and license edited traits in Brassica juncea, India's main edible oilseed, where yields lag leading producers.
Agrotech
USDA scientists build an open AI platform to map weeds and crop stress in the field
ARS's Digital Agricultural Systems Hub uses a 50-terabyte image library, a robot camera and boom-mounted cameras to train and deploy computer vision for farms.