The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Madrasa Education Act, 2004, which regulates the operation of madrasas across the state.

The Andhra Pradesh State Council of Higher Education (APSCHE) is set to release the seat allocation results for the AP Law Common Entrance Test (AP LAWCET) 2024 counselling today, November 1.

A latest innovation from  the Silicon valley of India is gaining traction for its AI robot named Chewie that eats kitchen waste and turns it into nutrient-rich fertilizer. Chewie is an intelligent, AI-powered robot that is made to address the increasing problem of wet waste in urban homes.  

How Chewie works

This innovative AI wet waste robot allows fast, hygienic processing of vegetable peels, leftover food and kitchen scraps, and converts the resulting material into a high-quality soil that can be applied to a home garden or a small farm. With its small, convenient size and user-friendly design, this robot will provide a more eco-friendly and efficient solution to cleaning up the kitchen, as well as making home composting simpler and less unpleasant.

Chewie is unique as it integrates artificial intelligence and environmental science. It tracks temperature, humidity, and the de-composition process in real-time, and optimizes conditions to support fast composting with no smell. The process of composting that takes weeks, needs space, and effort is automated, compact, and fast, with Chewie producing organic fertilizer that enriches the soil and promotes healthy growth in plants. The technology is particularly significant in such cities as Bengaluru where landfill overflow is an acute issue and organic waste is a major contributor to pollution.

Benefits for students 

To students of agriculture and environmental science, Chewie sets a good example of the way technology can address the real-life problems of sustainable agriculture and urban waste treatment. It shows the application of robotics and AI outside factory floors and laboratories to such daily issues as household waste reduction and urban agriculture. 

Learning the science behind how Chewie works would provide students with a profound sense of the biology of decomposition, sensor technology, and machine learning algorithms. In the case of engineering students, it also allows discovering the possibilities of intelligent systems and automation that can optimize natural processes, such as composting, which will likely motivate them to develop similar solutions to challenges in agricultural technology.

Environmental Impact and Future 

This robot, Chewie, can also be viewed as an important lesson in circular economy principles using waste as a resource to produce food. This feature is crucial when India moves towards sustainable agriculture in order to nourish an ever-increasing population without harming the environment. In promoting production of rich fertilizer at the home level, Chewie will decrease the amount of chemical fertilizers required to enrich the soil, and will decrease carbon emissions related to the transportation of waste to landfills, making cities greener.

The Biocon Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said that the AI wet waste management robot has the potential to scale up and create wider environmental benefits. The success of Chewie may trigger the adoption of more technology-based eco-solutions in Indian cities, fostering a sustainable urban environment and driving young developers to consider a career in the intersection of agriculture, environment, and technology.

In conclusion, Chewie, the kitchen waste Robot produced in Bengaluru, is not an ordinary robot for the kitchen but a remarkable tool of AI and robotics that is changing waste management and farming in India. It not only gives people the ability to make green decisions without much effort, it also provides fertile land to practice urban agriculture, and is a good example to inspire students who might be interested in learning more about agriculture technology and sustainability. 

With innovative technology like Chewie being introduced in the current era, the future of agriculture is more intelligent, clean and more intertwined with technology giving the much-needed cue to enthusiasts who wish to pursue a lucrative career in tech, agriculture or bioengineering.

Think of the kind of love story that altered the future of farming and supplying the food to billions of people, though also not a human to human one. Rather, it was one between plants, very deep in prehistory, that left us with one of the most significant staple foods in the world: the potato.

An incredible and astonishing study published in Cell in 2025 shows that the potato is actually the off-spring of an ancient mating, a genetic marriage, between the tomato and a wild plant known as Etuberosum. This chance plant romance occurred some 9 million years back in South America and re-wrote the book of plant evolution by developing the tuber, the starchy and potent underground powerhouse of the potato.

The Tale of an Origins of a Tubular Tale

The study was conducted by Professor Sanwen Huang and a group at the Agricultural Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, China in partnership with a group of scientists in the UK and Canada. They carried out the largest ever genetic examination of cultivated and wild crop potatoes, with more than 450 cultivated and 56 wild potato genomes, a comparison with tomatoes and their cousins.

And what they discovered was shocking: 21st century potatoes possess a steady, harmonic blend of two DNA very different lineages. The tomato is the mother and the tomato is the father: the Etuberosum- a wild, potato-like plant native to Chile which is actually not a producer of tubers. The two species separated 14 million years ago, however, 9 million years later, they hybridized giving birth to something new and unique, a plant that had the capability to grow underground tubers.

The Major Genetic Gifts: The Blueprint of the Tuber

This ancient hybridization merged crucial genes from both parents, enabling the evolution of tubers, a plant organ that stores starch and water underground, offering survival advantages during tough environmental conditions.

• From the tomato came the gene SP6A, often called the "tuber switch," which signals when the plant should start forming tubers underground.
• From Etuberosum came the gene IT1, which controls the growth of underground stems that swell to become tubers.

Without this unique genetic combination, the potato could not have evolved its signature tuber.

What is So Important about This Genetic Marriage?

Development of the tubers provided the early potato with a massive evolutionary advantage. Tubers enable the plant to:

• Stock up nutrients and water in the ground, which makes it withstand droughts and cold climates.
• Grow asexually, by growing new plants by sprouting the buds on the tuber itself, without any necessities of having seeds or the power of pollination
• Be capable of living in many places, including mild lowlands and severe Andean alpine tundra.

This had come at the right time, when a fast uplift of Andes Mountains was in process; thus exposing plants to unfamiliar terrains and new environments challenging them. It was the ability of the potato to live and prosper where other plants failed to do so that led to its explosion of diversification to the more than 100 varieties of wild potato that exist and ultimately, domestication by humans.

Chemoparaboxide: More Than a Crop - a Scientific Milestone

The research resolves a decades-old puzzle emerging on why potatoes but not tomatoes with their relatives form tubers. Tomatoes do not possess underground tubers and, though Etuberosum possesses underground stems, it does not develop tubers. The scientists suggest that the tuber traces its origin to a genomic recombination event during hybridization, an evolutionary minor miracle in which nature elaborated through the sheer passage of time millions of years.

Non-participating scholars have commended it as a prototype in the study of any kind of similar evolution in the other species. The study offers new knowledge which may determine the formation of potato breeding programs in the future and make crops more adaptive to climate change and enhance food security to people all over the world.

Potato was really once a tomato 

The potato is not only a humble, everyday vegetable, but the child of an inconceivable 9-million-year-old mating between its tomato-like ancestor and a wild relative named Etuberosum. This primitive hybridization led to the invention of tuber and this invention made potato to be staple around the globe despite feeding billions of people with its nutritious and resilient underground tubers.

Tomato is the mother and Etuberosum is the father as Prof. Huang puts it. The tale of this botanical family can teach us that nature can take us by surprise and that even what we put on our plates has a very complicated genesis.

This find serves as a reminder that we should not only value potatoes as a loved vegetable and a desired fast food source but also because of its rich evolutionary history, which is a testament to genetic collaboration and its deep role in life on this planet.