INTRODUCTION Unlike Europeans’ pastime of mushroom hunting or lactovegetarian's craze for "organic " food (1), in Himalayan developing nations like Nepal, either poor man's delicacy or hunger, often drives people living in hills to forage for wild mushrooms. In Nepal, unnumbered and medically unpublished small epidemics of mushroom poisoning take a heavy death toll annually. The present case de...

Unraveling the relative roles of erosion and tectonics in shaping the modern topography of active orogens requires datasets documenting spatial and temporal patterns of exhumation, surface uplift and climatic forcing throughout orogenic growth. Here we report the results of biotite Ar/Ar incremental heating and single-grain laser-fusion experiments from a nearly vertical, ∼1000 m age-elevation ...

Hot-spring waters near the Main Central thrust in the Marsyandi River of central Nepal have Sr concentrations to 115 mM with 87Sr/86Sr to 0.77. Small amounts of hydrothermal water (#1% of total river discharge) have a significant impact on the solute chemistry and the budget of radiogenic Sr in the Marsyandi. In the upper Marsyandi, river chemistry reflects carbonate weathering, with 87Sr/86Sr ...

[1] Geothermobarometric together with microand macro-structural data indicate ductile flow in the metamorphic core of the Himalaya in the Garhwal region of India. Peak metamorphic pressure and temperature increase dramatically across the Main Central Thrust (MCT) from !5 kbar and !550°C in the Lesser Himalayan Crystalline Sequence (LHCS) to !14 kbar and !850°C at !3 km above the MCT in the Grea...

The common uncultivated plants, Datura stramonium, Jatropha curcas, Croton bonplandianum, Acalypha indica and Ageratum conyzoides are grown in and around the cultivated fields of sub-Himalayan north-east Indian plains. Chlorosis, leaf curling, distortion, yellowing and stunted growth symptoms are often found in the plants mentioned. Yellow vein mosaic diseases caused by begomoviruses, associate...

Quantitative chronologies for the impressive glacial successions that occur throughout the Himalaya have, until recently, been almost totally lacking. Within the last decade two new techniques have promised to remedy this situation. These techniques, optically stimulated luminescence and cosmogenic nuclide surface exposure dating, enable the age of many glacial features to be determined and hav...

The present study was conducted to characterize the native plant growth promoting (PGP) bacteria from wheat rhizosphere and root-endosphere in the Himalayan region of Rawalakot, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Pakistan. Nine bacterial isolates were purified, screened in vitro for PGP characteristics and evaluated for their beneficial effects on the early growth of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Am...

In the upper Subansiri District of Arunachal Pradesh, India, Higher Himalayan Crystallines are exposed in and around Taliha and the outcrop of MCT in the immediate south of Taliha is recognizable with the development of tourmaline bearing leucogranite dykes representing melting of the crustal rocks. The gneisses of the Taliha area consist of mainly quartz, mica, K-feldspar and garnet. The Quart...