As winter sets in over Punjab, one can hear the humdrum of hundreds of machines harvesting rice across lakhs of hectares of paddy fields. In Maharashtra, villages in Vidarbha lug their snowy cotton harvest to the market. Years ago, these landscapes were a sprawling array of forests, grasslands, wetlands and multiple crops cultivated on a shifting basis.
The study from IISc found a previously unidentified yeast-like symbiont inside the lac insect Kerria lacca, which gives the insect its distinctive red colour and, may also provide other nutrients in return for shelter.
