UPSC Prelims News 11 March 2023

UPSC Prelims News of 11 March 2023

COE for Horticulture Crops

Context: Three new Centers of Excellence for horticultural crops have been approved recently by the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare.

About COE for Horticulture Crops

• The Centers of Excellence (CoEs) are being established in various States through Bilateral Cooperation of Research Institutes, under Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH).
  • They will serve as demonstration and training centres for latest technologies in the field of horticulture.
• Role: The CoEs serve as source of planting material for fruits and vegetable seedlings for protected cultivation and used for transfer of technology and knowhow in diverse areas, viz., Post-Harvest management, Irrigation and Fertigation, Plant protection, Introduction of New Varieties, Pollination etc.

UPSC Prelims News 10 March 2023

National Bamboo Mission (NBM)

Context: Recently, National Bamboo Mission (NBM) conducted “The National Workshop of Bamboo Sector Development” in New Delhi.

About NBM

• NBM was launched during 2018-19 as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme (CSS).
• It is being carried out as a sub-plan of the Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH).
• NBM mainly focuses on the development of the complete value chain of Bamboo sector to link growers with consumers.
• The Department of Agriculture & Cooperation (DAC) under the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare implemented the scheme, to harness the potential of the bamboo crop.

Objective:

• To increase the area under bamboo plantation in non-forest Government and private lands to supplement farm income and contribute towards resilience to climate change.
• Connecting farmers to markets to enable farmer producers to get a ready market for the bamboo grown and to increase the supply of appropriate raw material to the domestic industry.
• It also endeavours to upgrade skills of traditional bamboo craftsmen as per the requirement of contemporary markets with a tie-up with enterprises and premier institutes.

The Mission will focus on development of bamboo in limited States where it has social, commercial and economical advantage, particularly in the North-eastern region and States including Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Karnataka, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala.

Kalakkad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR)

Context: Recently, two researchers from Tamil Nadu spotted a rare moth species (Mimeusemia ceylonica) for the first time in India in the buffer zone of Kalakkad–Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR).

Mimeusemia Ceylonica

• Mimeusemia ceylonica is a moth species belonging to the subfamily Agaristinae and family Noctuidae.
• It was last sighted 127 years ago – at Trincomalee in Sri Lanka in 1893.
• It was first illustrated and described by English entomologist George Hampson in 1893.

About KMTR

• Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) lies in Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari District of Tamil Nadu.
• Kalakad Wildlife Sanctuary was established in 1976 primarily for the conservation of Lion Tailed Macaque.
• Mundanthurai Tiger Sanctuary was declared as Nation’s first Tiger Sanctuary during 1962.
• Vegetation types gradually change from dry thorn forest to dry deciduous.
• River Thamirabarani and 13 other rivers originate from KMTR. Hence, KMTR is called popularly as River Sanctuary.
• This sanctuary also forms a part of Agasthiyarmalai Biosphere Reserve.

Flora and Fauna:

• Apart from tigers, the forest is home to Sambar, spotted deer, elephants, leopards, wild dogs, etc., and a large number of bird species, reptiles, etc.

Other Tiger Reserves in Tamil Nadu

• Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR)
• Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR)
• Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve (STR)

Women Icons Leading Swachhata (WINS) Awards 2023

Context: First Edition of Women Icons Leading Swacchata (WINS) Awards 2023 has been launched by MoHUA.

About WINS

• The WINS Awards 2023 aim to recognize celebrate and disseminate inspiring and exemplary initiatives in urban sanitation and waste management by women led organizations and individual women.
• It aims to make a transformational shift from ‘Women in Swachhata’ to ‘Women led Swachhata’.
• This Mission has enabled access to safe sanitation and dignity of women while also opening livelihood and skilling opportunities to women in the area of sanitation and waste management.
• Swachhatam Portal will be used for the selection of entries.  In 2021, the integrated Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban MIS portal Swachhatam and the state-of-art GIS platform were launched under SBM-U 2.0

Megha-Tropiques-1

Context: Recently, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) brought down the decommissioned weather satellite Megha-Tropiques-1 in a controlled manner and burned up in the atmosphere.

About Megha-Tropiques-1:

• Megha-Tropiques-1 was developed as a joint mission by India and France to study the tropics’ water cycle and energy exchanges.
• The 1,000-kg satellite was launched in 2011 with a mission life of three years.
• Its objective was to gain a better understanding of meteorological and climatic processes in the tropics by collecting accurate data on the water and energy budget of the tropical atmosphere which would help in the development of different climate models.

ISRO brings down Megha-Tropiques-1

• A series of manoeuvring exercises were carried out to lower the orbit of the satellite and it later entered the denser atmosphere and disintegrated over the Pacific Ocean.
• United Nations and Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) guidelines recommend that:
  • Stored fuel must be removed from the spacecraft to ensure that no accidents break up the satellite in space and create more debris.
  • Satellites should be deorbited – either through controlled entry over a safe impact zone (like the one ISRO did) or by bringing it down to reduce the orbital lifetime – the time it would take for a satellite to drop from a particular orbit by itself – to less than 25 years.

Madhav National Park

Context: The Environment Minister has announced the release of two tigers from Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserves, into the specially created soft release enclosures in Madhav National Park.

About Madhav National Park:

• Madhav National Park is a wildlife reserve located in the Shivpuri district of Madhya Pradesh, India.
• It was established in 1959 as Shivpuri National Park and was later renamed Madhav National Park in honor of Madhao Rao Scindia, the former ruler of Gwalior.
• The park covers an area of approximately 375 square kilometers and is characterized by rugged terrain and rocky hills.
• Located in the ecoregion of Khathiar-Gir dry deciduous forests and is thus rich in biodiversity. It is part of upper Vindhyan hills.
• It is home to a wide variety of wildlife, including tigers, leopards, sloth bears, hyenas, Indian gazelles, chinkara, blackbuck, sambar deer, and langurs.
• The park is also a birdwatcher’s paradise, with over 200 species of birds recorded.
• Sakhya Sagar Lake is situated near the Madhav National Park and is a man-made reservoir built across the Sakhya River.

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