News Summary · 4 minutes read
Stay ahead in your UPSC CSE preparation with our daily News Summary. Designed to save time, it highlights key national and international events from leading newspapers and government websites.
Functional foods and smart proteins in India
- Functional Foods are foods that provide health benefits beyond basic nutrition → intentionally enriched, fortified, or formulated to promote well-being or reduce the risk of diseases → contain added vitamins, minerals, probiotics, antioxidants, or bioactive compounds.
- Examples: Iodised Salt, Omega-3 Fortified Eggs or Milk, Probiotic Yoghurt, Vitamin-Enriched Rice or Wheat Flour, etc.
- Smart Proteins are developed using biotechnology to reduce dependence on conventional animal-based production → replicate the taste, texture, and nutritional profile of meat, dairy, and eggs without slaughter, excessive land use, or high carbon emissions.
- Examples: plant-based proteins, fermentation-derived proteins, cultivated or cultured proteins.
- Opportunities
- India needs to focus on nutritional security alongside food security to improve its health indicators → role of functional foods and smart proteins is important.
- Functional foods and smart proteins are recognised under India’s BioE3 policy.
- Global plant-based foods market is estimated to be $85-240 bn by 2030 → India could become a major supplier with its strong agricultural base and expanding biotech industry → Jobs in agriculture, manufacturing, and logistics sectors.
- Challenges
- No definitive guidance from FSSAI on novel foods such as cultivated meat or precision-fermented proteins.
- Unverified and mislabelled products.
- Transitioning to biomanufacturing requires upskilling the existing workforce.
- Negative public perception about novel foods, e.g., scepticism about “lab-made” food.
- Way forward
- A national regulatory framework for novel foods under FSSAI should provide clarity on definitions, safety evaluation, and labelling for functional and alternative protein products.
- Public-private partnerships can help scale biomanufacturing infrastructure and indigenise critical technologies such as precision fermentation.
- Public education and inclusion of farmers in new value chains will be essential to ensure that biotechnology’s benefits extend across society.
Aditya-L1 captures rare view of solar eruption close to Sun
- Using the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) onboard Aditya-L1, scientists have observed a coronal mass ejection (CME) extremely close to its point of origin on the Sun.
- Significance
- First-ever spectroscopic observations of a CME in visible spectrum → previous CME observations were made farther from the Sun, which failed to capture micro details.
- These near-Sun measurements give new insight into how much mass and energy the Sun releases during an eruption.
- Understanding CMEs helps scientists predict space weather, which can disrupt satellites, power grids, and communication systems on Earth.
Aditya-L1
- India’s first dedicated space-based solar observatory → launched by ISRO using PSLV-XL/C-57 rocket in 2023.
- Positioned in a halo orbit around the Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1 (L1), allowing a continuous, uninterrupted, 24/7 solar monitoring.
- Studies the Sun’s upper atmosphere, the chromosphere and corona, including coronal heating, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs).
- Aims to understand space weather affecting Earth, improving the prediction of solar storms and their impact on technology.
- Carries 7 payloads, including Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT) and Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC).
Soil Organic Carbon (SOC)
- SOC is the carbon stored in soil from decomposed plants and animals → improves structure, nutrient availability, and water retention.
- Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) findings
- Unscientific use of fertilisers and climate change are causing loss of SOC across India → SOC is declining in regions like Punjab, Haryana, and western UP due to chemical imbalance.
- Rising temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns also reduce SOC.
- Low SOC indicates soil is poor in micronutrients, while high SOC indicates soil is rich in micronutrients.
- Higher SOC: Usually found in hilly or high-elevation, cooler regions with balanced to high rainfall → Reason: Adequate rainfall supports dense vegetation, adding organic biomass, while low temperatures slow microbial decomposition, allowing carbon to accumulate in the soil.
- Lower SOC: Common in hot, dry, and intensively farmed plains → Reason: Rainfall deficiency limits vegetation and biomass input, while high temperatures accelerate organic matter breakdown, leading to carbon depletion.
- Notably, high rainfall with high temperature in tropical rainforests causes leaching and rapid decomposition, lowering SOC, and cold deserts also show low SOC due to minimal biomass production.
Quick Picks
- Super Typhoon Fung-wong: a tropical cyclone that formed in the western Pacific and primarily affected the Philippines and Taiwan.
- First-ever Global Peace Prayer Festival (GPPF) is being held in Thimphu (Bhutan) from November 4 to 19.
- Rafah: a city in the southern Gaza Strip, Palestine.
- Hamas: a militant Islamist Palestinian movement, primarily operating in the Gaza Strip.
- Angola has agreed to join the International Big Cat Alliance (IBCA) and Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA), both of which are spearheaded by India → IBCA focuses on conserving 7 big cat species, and GBA aims to accelerate the adoption of sustainable biofuels.
- INS Sahyadri is participating in the multilateral Exercise Malabar-2025 in Guam (Northern Pacific). INS Sahyadri is a Guided Missile Stealth Frigate, which is indigenously designed and constructed.
- Anish Bhanwala: clinched a silver medal at the ISSF World Championships in the men’s 25-metre rapid fire pistol event at Cairo in Egypt → first Indian to do so.
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