The Jamuna, a major distributary of the Brahmaputra, is one of the most morphologically dynamic braided rivers in the world. Its waters carry an enormous sediment load delivered from the Himalayas, and its mean annual discharge of approximately 20,541 cubic meters per second, recorded by the Bangladesh Water Development Board, swings dramatically between monsoon floods and dry-season lows. This combination of high sediment supply and seasonal flow variability drives rapid channel adjustments: sandbars form and vanish, the thalweg, the deepest line of the riverbed, wanders across the channel, and entire banklines retreat or advance within a single year. For communities in Jamalpur district, this variability is a chronic socio-economic hazard, with erosion hotspots repeatedly consuming farmland, homes, and rural infrastructure.

To capture these changes systematically, the research team assembled a methodological framework that blends satellite remote sensing, morphological measurements, and field validation. Multi-temporal imagery from Landsat 5, covering 1994 to 2012, and Landsat 8, covering 2013 to 2024, was processed through Google Earth Engine, a cloud-based platform that makes decadal-scale analysis of large regions computationally feasible. The team calculated the Normalized Difference Water Index, or NDWI, for each image, using the ratio of the green and near-infrared bands to classify pixels as water or non-water and thereby extract the river’s bankline. Although NDWI is a widely used and practical approach for large-scale river analysis, the researchers acknowledged its limitations, including mixed pixels and shallow-water effects, and selected thresholds through careful visual comparison with the original imagery.

Once banklines were extracted, the team imported them into ArcGIS using a projected coordinate system and computed annual areas of erosion, accretion, and unchanged land by comparing overlapping regions between consecutive years. The year-by-year results show a river in near-constant flux. Between 1995 and 2005, the channel was highly unstable, with severe erosion episodes in 1995, 1998, and 2000 accompanied by substantial accretion zones, indicating simultaneous bank retreat and land formation elsewhere. From 2006 onward, stable bank segments increased considerably, but erosion surged again between 2014 and 2021, a renewal the authors attribute to a combination of natural hydrological variability and human pressures such as unregulated sand extraction and floodplain deforestation. Across the full study period, mean annual erosion was 1,911.61 hectares, while mean annual accretion reached 1,844.71 hectares.

What sets this study apart from most satellite-based erosion assessments is its second dimension: the vertical. Planform imagery alone cannot reveal whether a riverbed is silting up or scouring down, yet that vertical balance determines navigable depth. To capture it, the researchers analyzed bathymetric cross-sections from four permanent monitoring stations operated by the Bangladesh Water Development Board, designated RMJ12.1, RMJ13, RMJ13.1, and RMJ14, all located within identified erosion and accretion hotspots. Bed elevations measured at 20-meter horizontal intervals were integrated using the trapezoidal rule, a numerical method that estimates the area beneath irregular curves, allowing the team to compute cross-sectional area and average depth for each survey and track how they changed over time.

The cross-sectional profiles revealed striking spatial and temporal variability in riverbed elevation. At station RMJ12.1, pronounced deepening concentrated in the mid-channel zone, with the deepest scour recorded in 2005 followed by partial recovery in later years. RMJ13 displayed the largest vertical oscillations, with localized deep scours whose positions shifted over time, a signature of frequent thalweg migration. RMJ13.1 showed alternating zones of bed lowering and sediment building, while RMJ14 exhibited significant vertical irregularity with periodic deep scouring interspersed with stable intervals. Linear regression of mean bed elevation across all four stations indicated a consistent downward trend, pointing to progressive channel degradation over the long term, punctuated by short-term disturbances such as localized scouring events.

Satellite and bathymetric findings were then tested against the ground. The researchers conducted key informant interviews with more than fifty residents, boat operators, and local officials, and carried out systematic transect walks along erosion-prone stretches, photographing near-vertical scarps, exposed soil layers, bank collapse, and failed protective works. These observations corroborated the satellite-derived maps of erosion-dominated zones. They also exposed a paradox that matters enormously for the region’s economy: while the banks keep eroding, recent years have seen a relative dominance of accretion, with sediment filling the channel, raising the bed, and shrinking navigable depth, especially during the dry season when discharge is lowest.

The navigational consequences are severe. According to seventy-five percent of community members interviewed, shallow river conditions force cargo vessels to lighten their loads or take longer alternative routes, driving transport costs up by an estimated 40 to 60 percent during the dry season. Journey times have lengthened by 60 to 70 percent in many cases as boats slow to avoid grounding or detour through deeper channels. Dredging demands have grown correspondingly, adding further expense. For a region that depends on the Jamuna to move bulk goods and agricultural produce, the creeping sedimentation represents a slow-motion economic squeeze that compounds the more visible drama of bank collapse and displacement.

The study’s findings align with earlier research on the Jamuna, which documented net accretion of roughly 125 square kilometers along the reach between Bahadurabad and Sarisabari over four decades, and erosion of about 832 square kilometers along the eastern bank, confirming the river’s persistent eastward migration. The authors argue that their integrated framework, combining multi-temporal satellite imagery, cross-sectional morphological data, and community-based validation, offers a robust template that could be extended to other sediment-rich braided rivers in Bangladesh, including the Teesta, Dharla, and Lower Padma. They also note the limitations of their approach: medium-resolution Landsat imagery introduces positional uncertainty in bankline delineation, gaps in bathymetric records make it difficult to tie specific changes to individual floods, and the small number of monitoring stations may not capture the full spatial heterogeneity of the channel.

Looking forward, the researchers propose augmenting the framework with high-resolution data from Sentinel-2 or drone-based surveys, hydrodynamic and sediment transport modeling, and machine learning approaches capable of predicting future erosion-accretion patterns and flagging vulnerable reaches before they fail. In a delta nation where tens of millions of people live on land built and rebuilt by rivers, the ability to anticipate where the water will go next is not an academic luxury. This study demonstrates that three decades of freely available satellite data, married to careful fieldwork, can turn one of the world’s most restless rivers from an unpredictable threat into a system that can be monitored, understood, and planned for, one bankline at a time.

Subject of Research: Spatiotemporal riverbank erosion, accretion, and navigability change along the braided Jamuna River in Bangladesh

Article Title: Assessment of spatiotemporal erosion and accretion patterns in the Jamuna riverbanks using satellite and morphological data

Article References: Haque, M. Z., Niha, F. T., Rahman, M. M., & Zaman, M. A. (2026). Assessment of spatiotemporal erosion and accretion patterns in the Jamuna riverbanks using satellite and morphological data. Discover Geoscience, 4(1), Article 385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44288-026-00760-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44288-026-00760-7

Keywords: Jamuna River, riverbank erosion, accretion, braided river, remote sensing, Landsat, Google Earth Engine, NDWI, bathymetry, navigability, Bangladesh, geomorphology

The team measured the full suite of physicochemical parameters, major ionic species, and selected trace metals using standard field and laboratory methods. What they found was a groundwater system under pressure from both natural geogenic processes and human activity. In the pre-monsoon period, salinity exceeded acceptable limits in 54.16 percent of samples, while sodium and chloride concentrations breached thresholds in 58.33 percent. Heavy metals told an even starker story: iron surpassed the standards set by Bangladesh’s Department of Environment in 75 percent of samples, manganese in 91.67 percent, potassium in 71.17 percent, and arsenic in 66.67 percent. These are not marginal exceedances confined to a few unlucky wells; they describe a broad regional pattern of contamination affecting the majority of the water sources tested.

After the monsoon, the pattern shifted but did not improve. Salinity exceedance dropped to 43.48 percent of samples, suggesting that monsoon recharge dilutes some of the salt burden, yet sodium concentrations exceeded limits in 65.22 percent of samples and chloride in 47.83 percent. More alarmingly, arsenic exceedance jumped to 95.65 percent of post-monsoon samples, while iron and manganese remained problematic in 86.96 percent and 73.91 percent respectively, and potassium in 60.87 percent. The monsoon, rather than flushing the aquifer clean, appears to mobilize or concentrate certain contaminants, particularly arsenic, in ways that make post-monsoon water in many wells less safe than the same wells produced months earlier.

To understand why, the researchers turned to the classical tools of hydrogeochemistry. Integrated analysis of the water’s ionic composition indicated that groundwater evolution in the district is strongly controlled by mineral dissolution and water-rock interaction, the slow chemical conversation between infiltrating rainwater and the sediments it percolates through. Ratios of sodium to chloride below one pointed to chloride enrichment driven by evaporation and localized saline-water influence, a signature consistent with coastal intrusion and concentration effects. Positive values of the chloro-alkaline indices revealed the occurrence of reverse ion exchange, a process in which calcium and magnesium in the water swap places with sodium held on clay mineral surfaces, further reshaping the water’s chemistry as it moves through the aquifer matrix.

The study’s methodological novelty lies in how it translates all this chemistry into a single, defensible measure of drinkability. Rather than relying on a conventional water quality index, which weights every parameter equally regardless of how much it actually varies, the team employed an entropy-based water quality index, or EWQI. Rooted in Shannon’s information theory, entropy weighting assigns greater influence to parameters that show the most variability and uncertainty across samples, letting the data itself decide which contaminants matter most. In the pre-monsoon season, 20 percent of samples rated as excellent and 35 percent as good, but a striking 30 percent fell into the extremely poor category. After the monsoon, excellent samples rose to 30 percent, yet extremely poor samples climbed to 43 percent, meaning that while some wells improved, the worst wells got worse, widening the gap between safe and unsafe water sources across the district.

Because water quality classification is inherently fuzzy, a sample is rarely purely good or purely bad, the researchers also deployed a fuzzy inference system coupled with three-dimensional response surface analysis. This modeling approach, borrowed from control engineering, allows partial memberships in multiple quality categories simultaneously and can probe how pairs of contaminants jointly influence the overall index. The analysis revealed that interactions between iron and potassium, and between manganese and arsenic, were strongly associated with variations in the EWQI. In other words, the degradation of water quality in Lakshmipur is not simply the sum of individual contaminants but emerges from combinations of metals acting together, a finding that has direct implications for which wells should be prioritized for treatment or abandonment.

Independent pollution indices corroborated the EWQI results. The heavy metal pollution index, the heavy metal evaluation index, the degree of contamination, and the nitrate pollution index all confirmed widespread heavy metal contamination across the sampled wells. The convergence of four separate indices, each constructed differently, on the same conclusion strengthens the case that metal contamination in the district’s aquifers is systemic rather than incidental. Given that arsenic enrichment in the alluvial aquifers of the Bengal delta has been documented for decades, the new study adds Lakshmipur to the map of districts where the problem persists and, in the post-monsoon window, intensifies.

The most consequential part of the analysis concerns human health. Using standard exposure models, the team calculated hazard quotients for non-carcinogenic effects of the detected contaminants and aggregated them into a hazard index. The results showed that children face greater non-carcinogenic risks than adults, with hazard index values exceeding the safe threshold of one. A hazard index above one indicates that the combined exposure to contaminants through drinking water surpasses the level considered acceptable over a lifetime, and the fact that children exceed this threshold more readily reflects their higher water intake relative to body weight and their developing physiology. In practical terms, the water from a substantial fraction of wells in the district poses measurable health risks to the most vulnerable members of the community.

What emerges from the study is a call to action grounded in seasonal reality. The authors emphasize the need for regular seasonal groundwater monitoring, safe-well mapping so that households can identify which wells are safe at which times of year, treatment of metal-contaminated wells, and sustainable management of the coastal aquifer as a whole. Because water quality in Lakshmipur is not static, a well that tests clean in March may deliver arsenic-laden water in November, monitoring programs that sample only once a year risk systematically missing the worst conditions. The integration of entropy weighting, fuzzy logic, pollution indices, hydrogeochemical interpretation, and health risk assessment in a single framework offers a template that could be applied to other coastal districts of Bangladesh and to deltaic aquifers worldwide facing similar combinations of salinity, geogenic metals, and human pressures.

The researchers also chart a path forward. Future work, they note, should include long-term seasonal observations, denser sampling networks, and formal uncertainty and sensitivity analyses to sharpen groundwater quality assessments under changing climatic and anthropogenic conditions. As sea levels rise and extraction intensifies across the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta, the pressures on aquifers like Lakshmipur’s will only grow. This study demonstrates that with the right analytical toolkit, it is possible to see not just whether groundwater is contaminated, but when, where, and why, knowledge that coastal communities will need in increasing measure as the seasons continue to reshape the water beneath their feet.

Subject of Research: Seasonal hydrogeochemistry, water quality, and health risks of coastal groundwater in Lakshmipur District, Bangladesh

Article Title: Hydrogeochemical evaluation and entropy-driven water quality assessment of Lakshmipur District’s groundwater, Southeastern Bangladesh

Article References: Hasan, M. M., Haque, K. E., Ahmed, S., Hasan, M. N. I., & Hasan, M. M. (2026). Hydrogeochemical evaluation and entropy-driven water quality assessment of Lakshmipur District’s groundwater, Southeastern Bangladesh. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 48(15), Article 616. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-026-03501-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s10653-026-03501-4

Keywords: groundwater, Bangladesh, coastal aquifer, arsenic, heavy metals, salinity, entropy water quality index, fuzzy inference, health risk assessment, hydrogeochemistry, water pollution, seasonal monitoring

The study, published as an open-access paper in the journal Discover Plants, was led by Al Amin Talukdar and colleagues from Patuakhali Science and Technology University, with collaborator Md. Jamal Hossain of the Bangladesh Institute of Research and Training on Applied Nutrition. The team set out to answer a deceptively simple question: which part of the Chui Jhal vine, treated with which growth regulator, produces the strongest new plants? Traditional propagation of the species relies on stem cuttings, but success rates are slow and erratic, and the use of plant growth regulators in Bangladesh’s Chui Jhal cultivation has remained strikingly limited. That gap, the authors argue, represents a substantial untapped opportunity for a plant that carries both cultural weight and medicinal promise, with traditional applications ranging from asthma and bronchitis to digestive complaints.

To interrogate the question rigorously, the researchers designed a two-factor experiment at the university’s Germplasm Centre in Dumki Upazila, Patuakhali District, within Agro-Ecological Zone 13. Vine material was originally sourced from the Spices Research Sub-centre of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute in Faridpur. The first experimental factor was the position of the cutting on the vine: the base section, roughly twelve months old; the middle section, about eight months old; and the tip section, approximately six months old. The second factor was a battery of ten growth regulator treatments, spanning a control with no regulator, the auxins indole-3-acetic acid and indole-3-butyric acid, and naphthalene acetic acid, each tested at 250 and 500 milligrams per litre, alongside three combinations pairing two regulators at 250 milligrams per litre each.

The cuttings themselves were prepared with careful attention to horticultural detail. Semi-hardwood segments were taken from healthy, disease-free mother vines about six months old, each cutting carrying three to five buds and measuring 20 to 30 centimetres in length with a diameter of 0.8 to 1 centimetre. The work was conducted in July, when ambient temperatures ranged from 26 to 33 degrees Celsius, rainfall averaged around 39 centimetres, and daylight lasted 13 to 14 hours. After being washed in distilled water and air-dried in shade for ten minutes, the lower 2.5 centimetres of each cutting, including the basal node, was immersed in its assigned treatment solution for just fifteen seconds before being planted in polybags filled with a sterilised 1:1 mixture of loamy soil and cow dung compost, steam-treated at approximately 100 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes.

The results, tracked at 30, 45, and 75 days after cutting, reveal a clear hierarchy among vine positions. Base cuttings achieved the highest survival at the first measurement, 79.99 percent, while the middle section led at the later intervals with 76.66 and 73.33 percent at 45 and 75 days respectively. Tip cuttings trailed consistently, falling to just 55.55 percent survival by the final assessment. When growth regulators entered the equation, the picture sharpened dramatically. Indole-3-butyric acid at 500 milligrams per litre, the treatment designated T5, drove survival in base and middle cuttings to a perfect 100 percent at multiple measurement points, with several other treatment combinations, including those involving 250 milligrams per litre of indole-3-acetic acid and 500 milligrams per litre of indole-3-butyric acid, also reaching complete survival. Untreated controls languished at the bottom of the range, dropping as low as 33.33 percent in tip cuttings.

Shoot development told a complementary story. Base cuttings produced the most leaves, rising from 1.90 per cutting at 30 days to 3.56 at 75 days, and generated the longest new shoots, reaching 6.27 centimetres by the final measurement. The 500 milligrams per litre indole-3-butyric acid treatment again proved the most effective leaf-promoting regime, while both 250 and 500 milligrams per litre of the same compound delivered standout shoot elongation. In the interaction analysis, base cuttings treated with 250 milligrams per litre indole-3-butyric acid achieved shoots up to 9.24 centimetres, and the corresponding leaf counts climbed to 5.33 per cutting by 75 days. The authors note that these findings echo earlier work on long pepper, in which auxin treatments stimulated cell division and stem elongation, accounting for greater leaf production and shoot length in treated cuttings.

Root architecture, arguably the most critical determinant of a cutting’s fate, showed its own subtle positional preference. Middle-section cuttings produced the highest root counts, averaging 22.86 roots per cutting by 75 days compared with 22.36 for base cuttings and 21.33 for tips. At the treatment level, 500 milligrams per litre of indole-3-butyric acid again dominated root number, while 250 milligrams per litre of the same compound produced the longest roots. The interaction data were striking: middle cuttings treated with 500 milligrams per litre indole-3-butyric acid yielded up to 39 roots per cutting, while base cuttings with 250 milligrams per litre indole-3-butyric acid extended roots to 9.38 centimetres. Control combinations, by contrast, produced as few as 2 to 3 roots per cutting early in the trial, underscoring the magnitude of the growth regulator effect.

The physiological explanation for the positional differences, the researchers suggest, lies in the internal chemistry of the vine itself. Base and middle sections contain greater carbohydrate reserves, richer nutrient content, more mature tissues, and higher concentrations of endogenous auxins and rooting cofactors, all of which support the initiation and development of adventitious roots. Tip cuttings, composed of younger, actively growing tissue, carry comparatively lower nutrient reserves and a different hormonal balance that limits their rooting response. This framework aligns with a broader body of literature on adventitious rooting, in which the interplay between stored carbohydrates, current photosynthesis, and hormonal signalling determines whether a severed stem segment commits to forming roots. The consistency of the indole-3-butyric acid advantage across survival, leaf production, root number, and root length suggests the compound is effectively supplementing the vine’s own auxin pool at the precise moment of greatest need.

The practical implications extend well beyond the laboratory. The authors conclude that base and middle vine sections treated with 500 milligrams per litre of indole-3-butyric acid represent the most suitable protocol for Chui Jhal propagation and recommend the approach for commercial-scale production and sustainable cultivation in Bangladesh. For farmers in Khulna and beyond, whose harvests currently depend on slow and unpredictable conventional cuttings, a fifteen-second dip in an inexpensive auxin solution could meaningfully compress the timeline from planting to harvestable stems and roots. The team is candid about the study’s limitations, noting that it was conducted at a single location over a single season, and they call for replication across different regions, seasons, and environmental conditions before definitive recommendations can be issued. Even so, the findings mark a significant step toward securing the future of one of South Asia’s most distinctive spices, a vine whose value has always been recognised at the dinner table and may now, at last, be matched in the nursery.

Subject of Research: Vegetative propagation of Piper chaba vine cuttings using plant growth regulators

Article Title: Response of Chui Jhal (Piper chaba) vine cuttings to plant growth regulators

Article References: Talukdar, A. A., Robbani, M., Hossain, M. J., Chowdhury, M. N. U., & Islam, M. S. (2026). Response of Chui Jhal (Piper chaba) vine cuttings to plant growth regulators. Discover Plants, 3(1), Article 430. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44372-026-00906-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44372-026-00906-4

Keywords: Chui Jhal, Piper chaba, plant growth regulators, indole-3-butyric acid, vegetative propagation, vine cuttings, adventitious rooting, auxins, Bangladesh, horticulture, survivability, spice crops

The International Health Regulations, revised in 2005 after earlier versions proved inadequate, require all 196 signatory states to develop core capacities for detecting, reporting, and responding to public health events at their borders. Under the framework, countries must designate Points of Entry, including international airports, seaports, and major ground crossings, where routine health screening, emergency medical services, and communication systems must be available around the clock. When an event rises to the level of a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, as COVID-19 did in January 2020, these entry points become critical nodes in a worldwide surveillance and containment network. Yet the regulations have long been implemented unevenly, particularly in resource-constrained settings, and the new study set out to document precisely where those implementation gaps lie in Bangladesh.

The research team conducted an exploratory qualitative study between October 2022 and June 2023, in the aftermath of the pandemic’s acute phase. They selected four designated Points of Entry: Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, the country’s busiest international air gateway; Shah Amanat International Airport in Chattogram; Chittagong Seaport, one of the largest maritime hubs in South Asia; and Benapole Ground Crossing, the principal land border crossing between Bangladesh and India. Data collection involved 30 interviews in total, comprising 20 in-depth interviews with frontline service providers and port users, and 10 key informant interviews with decision-makers and experienced service providers. All interviews were transcribed, coded, and subjected to thematic analysis using ATLAS.ti software, version 7.5.10, allowing the researchers to identify recurring patterns in how officials and travelers experience border health operations.

The central finding is stark: the study revealed more challenges than enablers on both the regulatory and public sides of IHR-2005 implementation. Among the most fundamental problems was a lack of understanding of the regulations themselves and their role in global infectious disease prevention and control. This is not a trivial administrative detail. If the officers stationed at an entry point do not grasp what the framework requires of them, or why it matters, the entire architecture of border health security weakens at its foundation. The researchers also identified inadequate training on IHR-2005 as a persistent barrier, compounding the knowledge deficit and leaving staff ill-prepared to execute the screening, reporting, and coordination duties the regulations demand.

Human resources emerged as another severe constraint. The study documented a critical shortage of personnel at the entry points, a problem familiar across many low- and middle-income countries where health workforces are stretched thin and border health posts compete with hospitals and clinics for scarce staff. Screening travelers for symptoms, managing health declarations, and responding to suspected cases all require trained people on the ground, and without them even well-designed protocols exist only on paper. The shortage interacts with the training gap in a damaging cycle: too few staff means those who are present cannot be spared for training, while untrained staff cannot build the institutional competence that would justify expanding the workforce.

Practical logistics added further friction. The researchers found limited availability of ambulances for transporting ill travelers, meaning that even when a potentially infectious passenger was identified, moving that person safely to a treatment facility could be difficult or delayed. Health offices were often inaccessible or not conveniently located at every Point of Entry, fragmenting the chain of command and slowing communication between border staff and the health authorities who must authorize and support public health actions. On the public side of the counter, the study recorded uncooperative behavior from travelers, a challenge that frontline screeners worldwide have encountered but which carries particular weight in crowded, high-throughput crossings where delays provoke frustration and evasion.

Not all entry points fared equally. The study found that Benapole Ground Crossing encountered the most significant obstacles in ensuring effective implementation of the regulations, and that the overall environment there was suboptimal. This finding matters because Benapole is one of the busiest land crossings in South Asia, handling enormous daily flows of passengers and goods between Bangladesh and India. Land crossings are inherently harder to manage than airports: passenger processing is less structured, infrastructure is often older, and the sheer volume of movement makes comprehensive screening difficult. By contrast, the other designated Points of Entry, including the two international airports and Chittagong Seaport, demonstrated good communication and coordination capacities, available medical and technical services, and a generally good environment, suggesting that implementation success in Bangladesh is less a uniform national failure than a uneven landscape in which some sites have achieved functional capacity while others lag far behind.

The methodological contribution of the study is also notable. According to the authors, no qualitative research on IHR-2005 implementation at designated Points of Entry in Bangladesh had been conducted before, making this the first in-depth account of how the framework operates, or fails to operate, at the country’s borders. Qualitative approaches of this kind capture dimensions that quantitative audits miss: the lived experience of officers who lack clear guidance, the frustrations of port users navigating health checks, and the informal workarounds that develop when formal systems fall short. The study received ethical approval from the Institutional Review Board of icddr,b under research protocol number PR-22149, with informed written consent obtained from all participants and transcripts anonymized and stored in password-protected databases. The work was funded by the Disease Control program of the Directorate General of Health Services, with core support from the governments of Bangladesh and Canada.

The findings carry implications well beyond Bangladesh’s borders. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that a pathogen detected in one country can circle the globe within days, and that the strength of the weakest border health system can determine the speed of international spread. The World Health Organization has repeatedly emphasized that global health security depends on every country meeting the core capacity requirements of the regulations, and independent assessments have consistently shown that many low- and middle-income countries remain short of those benchmarks. Bangladesh’s experience illustrates the specific mechanisms by which the gap opens: knowledge deficits among staff, inadequate training pipelines, chronic understaffing, missing transport and infrastructure, and public non-cooperation. Each of these is addressable, but only with sustained investment and political attention rather than emergency-time improvisation.

The researchers conclude that the implementation of IHR-2005 at designated Points of Entry in Bangladesh faces significant challenges that hinder its effectiveness, and that addressing these barriers is essential to strengthen enforcement of the regulations and enhance the country’s ability to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases at its key entry points. Their evidence suggests a clear agenda: systematic training on the regulations for all border health staff, recruitment to close the human resource gap, guaranteed ambulance and transport capacity for ill travelers, and health offices physically present and accessible at every designated entry point, with particular urgency at Benapole Ground Crossing. As the world prepares for future pandemics that experts consider inevitable rather than hypothetical, studies like this one provide the granular, ground-level evidence that turns abstract international commitments into workable practice. The borders of Bangladesh, like those of many countries, are only as secure against infectious disease as the people, training, and equipment stationed there, and this study shows exactly where those defenses need reinforcement.

Subject of Research: Implementation of the International Health Regulations 2005 for infectious disease control at designated Points of Entry in Bangladesh

Article Title: Critical gaps in infectious disease prevention and control: insights from IHR-2005 implementation enablers and challenges at key entry points in Bangladesh

Article References: Dutta, G. K., Hasan, M. K., Sanin, K. I., Roy, B. R., Ali, M. S., Islam, M. N., Islam, M. S., Khan, M. N. A., Mahmud, M., Nadia, N., Noushin, F., & Tofail, F. (2026). Critical gaps in infectious disease prevention and control: insights from IHR-2005 implementation enablers and challenges at key entry points in Bangladesh. BMC Public Health. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-026-29658-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s12889-026-29658-2

Keywords: IHR-2005, Points of Entry, Bangladesh, global health security, infectious disease control, border health, COVID-19, public health emergency, qualitative research, LMICs, Benapole Ground Crossing, WHO

The logic behind the experiment is straightforward but compelling. Fish already supplies nearly 20 percent of the animal protein consumed by about 3.1 billion people worldwide, and fish protein is widely considered superior to that of meat or eggs because of its balanced essential amino acid composition, its payload of micronutrients, and its low burden of saturated fat. Yet fish remains underconsumed in many communities because it is perishable, spoils quickly, and its sensory properties put off some eaters, particularly young people. Bread, by contrast, is affordable, ubiquitous, and beloved in developing tropical countries, where cereal crops can contribute roughly 75 percent of total caloric intake. But bread is nutritionally lopsided: rich in carbohydrates and fiber, it falls short on protein and minerals, and its high carbohydrate load has been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and colon cancer. Both the FDA and the WHO recognize bread as an effective vehicle for nutrient enrichment, making it an ideal carrier for a protein boost.

Silver carp, a fast-growing invasive species farmed extensively across Asia, was an obvious candidate. The research team purchased fresh fish averaging 1.92 kilograms from the Boro Bazar market in the Jashore district, filleted the animals, separated the flesh from bones and fins, minced it, dried it for 12 hours at 65 degrees Celsius in a hot air oven, and ground the dried mince into a powder that was stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius until use. They then prepared four bread formulations following a modified Stokić method: a control loaf made purely from refined wheat flour, and three experimental loaves in which 5, 10, or 15 percent of the wheat flour by weight was replaced with silver carp powder. Each 84-gram batch of flour-plus-powder was combined with salt, yeast, sugar, vegetable oil, and water, kneaded for 20 minutes, rested for 30 minutes at room temperature, shaped, and baked for about 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius.

The nutritional results were striking and followed a clean dose-response pattern. Protein content climbed from 15.18 percent in the control bread to 18.51 percent at 5 percent substitution, 21.8 percent at 10 percent, and 24.60 percent at the 15 percent level. Lipid content rose in parallel, from 6.44 percent to 9.17 percent, as the fish powder—whose own lipid content has been reported at 13.65 percent—diluted the starch-rich flour. Carbohydrate, predictably, fell from 65.02 percent to 53.27 percent across the same range. Moisture content, hovering between 10.13 and 10.95 percent, did not vary significantly, and the authors note that such low moisture bodes well for shelf life, since food stability generally declines as moisture rises. Ash content, a proxy for total mineral content, stayed essentially flat at around 2.3 to 2.4 percent, an unexpected result that contrasts with some earlier studies using salmon or tilapia powders.

Energy values increased significantly with fortification, peaking at 394.50 kilocalories per 100 grams in the 10 percent loaf versus 378.76 in the control, driven by the denser protein and lipid contributions. But the most dramatic nutritional upgrade appeared in the amino acid analysis, performed with a Hitachi LA 8080 amino acid analyzer after acid hydrolysis of the samples. Total amino acids nearly doubled, from 11,346.41 milligrams per 100 grams in control bread to 20,588.98 milligrams per 100 grams in the 15 percent loaf. Methionine was the most abundant amino acid in every formulation, rising from 3,429.84 to 5,825.01 milligrams per 100 grams, while phenylalanine reached 5,217.79 milligrams and cystine climbed significantly above control levels. Valine was least abundant but still rose steadily with fish content. The authors note that tryptophan could not be measured because it is destroyed during acid hydrolysis, and that without performic acid oxidation the methionine and cystine values may be slightly underestimated—honest caveats that do not blunt the overall picture.

This amino acid enrichment matters because wheat flour is notoriously limited in essential amino acids, and fish protein carries a more optimal essential amino acid profile than plant proteins. Adequate intake of indispensable amino acids such as lysine and methionine is critical for childhood growth, cognitive development, immune function, and the prevention of stunting, while balanced amino acid nutrition in adults helps maintain muscle mass and metabolic health. In regions where protein-energy malnutrition and poor dietary diversity persist, fortifying a staple that people already eat every day with a cheap, locally available fish could be a cost-effective public health strategy. The researchers explicitly frame the fortified bread as a potential tool against malnutrition in developing regions, where silver carp aquaculture is already well established.

Mineral analysis by inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry reinforced the case. Sodium more than doubled, from 5.33 to 11.57 milligrams per 100 grams, and calcium rose from 7.88 to 18.73 milligrams per 100 grams at the highest fortification level. Zinc increased from 1.95 to 2.89 milligrams and iron from 1.63 to 1.95 milligrams per 100 grams. Calcium plays essential roles in bone integrity and blood pressure regulation, and adequate intake has been associated with reduced risks of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy and lower LDL cholesterol. Just as importantly, the heavy metal screen was reassuring: cadmium, arsenic, copper, and lead all remained far below international safety limits, chromium stayed under the FAO/WHO guideline of 0.1 milligrams per 100 grams, and nickel, though elevated to 0.05 milligrams in some loaves, remained well within the tolerable daily intake of 0.3 milligrams per day.

Nutrition, however, is worthless if nobody eats the bread, and this is where the story gets nuanced. A sensory panel of fifty untrained but regular fish consumers, aged 22 to 40, rated the loaves on color, flavor, softness, chewiness, and overall acceptability on a ten-point scale. The control bread scored highest across all attributes, and sensory quality declined progressively as fish powder levels rose. The 5 percent loaf tracked the control closely, particularly in color and flavor, while the 10 percent loaf showed moderate reductions, mainly in chewiness and flavor. The 15 percent loaf fared worst, earning the lowest marks in every category, especially color and overall acceptability. Instrumental color measurement told a parallel story: lightness, redness, and yellowness values all fell with increasing fish content, producing a dark brown crumb at 15 percent substitution. The culprit is the Maillard reaction, in which reducing sugars react with amino acids, particularly lysine, during baking to form brown pigments and flavor compounds; higher protein content means more reactants and darker bread.

The pH of the loaves also shifted subtly toward neutrality with fish content, from 6.24 in the control to 6.37 at 15 percent substitution, a change the authors attribute to the buffering capacity of fish muscle proteins and their abundant alkaline amino acids such as lysine. A pH closer to neutral may even be gentler on the stomach for people with acid sensitivity. Taken together, the data point to a practical sweet spot: breads fortified with 5 to 10 percent silver carp powder scored nearly as well as plain bread in taste, aroma, texture, and overall acceptability while delivering substantially more protein, amino acids, and minerals. The authors suggest that 10 percent is the viable balance between functional benefit and consumer acceptance, and they recommend gradually introducing fish powder at levels that do not alter taste or texture, combined with consumer education and sensory-optimized product development.

The study is not without limitations, which the authors candidly acknowledge. No storage stability trials, microbial analyses, or lipid oxidation assessments were conducted, so the shelf-life behavior of the fortified bread remains unknown. Fish lipids are prone to rancidity, and how the loaf holds up over days of storage could determine whether the concept survives outside the laboratory. Still, the core finding stands: an abundant, low-value fish can be converted into a shelf-stable powder that transforms one of humanity’s most common foods into a significantly better protein source. As aquaculture expands and the search for sustainable, affordable nutrition intensifies, the idea of a fish-fortified loaf—hiding a dose of complete protein inside an everyday slice—may prove one of the more quietly revolutionary developments in food science.

Subject of Research: Nutritional and sensory evaluation of wheat bread fortified with silver carp fish powder

Article Title: Fortification of bread with silver carp ( Hypophthalmichthys molitrix ) fish powder: Effects on nutritional composition and sensory attributes

Article References: Maria, S. J., Antu, M. A. R., Ahmed, M. T., Choudhury, M., Mondal, S., Rahman, M. A., & Haq, M. (2026). Fortification of bread with silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) fish powder: Effects on nutritional composition and sensory attributes. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45460

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45460

Keywords: silver carp, bread fortification, food science, protein enrichment, amino acids, malnutrition, functional foods, mineral content, sensory evaluation, aquaculture, Heliyon, Bangladesh

The study’s central challenge was to determine whether automated, data-driven scheduling of irrigation and fertigation could actually perform under genuine field conditions, not just in laboratory prototypes. Farmers in Bangladesh typically apply fertilizers and pesticides without knowing whether they are necessary, and more than 80 percent of the country’s irrigation pumps run on costly diesel. Eggplant, a year-round crop grown on roughly 51,165 hectares and a key income source for rural households, suffers an estimated 30 percent yield loss each year to pests and diseases, making it an ideal test case for a system that promises to deliver precisely measured inputs at precisely the right moments.

The system the researchers built combined a sensor node, fitted with soil and meteorological instruments, with an automation node that controlled drip irrigation lines and fertigation pumps. Soil moisture probes, electrical conductivity sensors, and weather stations streamed data wirelessly to the cloud, where a decision-making algorithm determined when to irrigate and when to inject nutrients. A mobile application gave operators remote access to real-time field information, allowing the entire crop to be monitored and controlled from anywhere. The logic was straightforward but finely tuned: irrigation began when soil moisture fell to 13.3 percent, corresponding to the management allowable depletion level, and stopped once moisture reached 26.6 percent, the soil’s field capacity.

Fertigation followed an equally disciplined schedule. On predetermined days after planting, specifically days 20, 40, 60, and 80, the system checked the soil’s electrical conductivity before acting. If conductivity exceeded 0.5 decisiemens per meter, considered unfavorable for plant growth in non-saline soils, fertigation was skipped entirely. Otherwise, separate pumps drew urea and potash solutions into a mixing tank, each motor calibrated to a flow rate of 16.6 milliliters per second so that exactly 20 liters of solution reached the field per event. These doses corresponded to 60 percent of the recommended nitrogen and 70 percent of the recommended potassium, a deliberate reduction designed to test whether precision placement could compensate for smaller quantities.

To evaluate the technology, the team laid out a randomized complete block design with four treatments, each replicated twice. The IoT-based system was compared against BARI-recommended eggplant production practices, a drip fertigation system using pan evaporation-based scheduling, and traditional farmer practices that had been documented through focus group discussions and interviews in the Narshingdi, Jamalpur, and Tangail districts. Traditional plots received surface flooding irrigation at 15 to 20 day intervals, full or excessive fertilizer doses, and frequent pesticide applications. Soil water content was tracked gravimetrically throughout the season at depths from 0 to 30 centimeters, and seasonal actual water use was calculated from irrigation, effective rainfall, and changes in stored soil water.

The yield results were striking in their evenness. The IoT-managed plots produced 30.99 tonnes of marketable fruit per hectare, statistically similar to the 31.73 tonnes achieved by drip fertigation and marginally above the 30.08 tonnes from traditional practice, a gain of roughly 3 percent. The advantage came through better fruit length, diameter, and unit weight, driven by the steady, adequate water supply that sensor-driven scheduling maintained. Traditional plots, by contrast, suffered from inadequate and poorly timed irrigation. The finding aligns with earlier studies showing that smart drip irrigation boosted banana yields by 15 percent and sweet corn yields by 12.8 percent, and with a Chinese meta-analysis finding that drip fertigation raised crop yields by 6 to 40 percent compared with flood irrigation and broadcast fertilization.

Water savings were the headline figure. The IoT system used 63 percent less irrigation water than traditional practices while improving water use efficiency by 172.7 percent, and irrigation water use efficiency rose in proportion. Total seasonal water use in the IoT and drip fertigation plots was nearly identical, and both were far below the furrow-irrigated BARI plots and the flood-irrigated traditional plots. The pattern echoes results from other crops: IoT-based drip systems cut water use by 65 percent in sweet potato, 50 percent in a pear orchard, and 30 percent in field tomatoes. Soil moisture data also revealed that the sensor-managed plots held less water than traditional ones, yet crops thrived, indicating that eggplants, which are moderately deep-rooted, could extract moisture from the 10 to 30 centimeter layer while the system avoided the waste of overwatering.

Nutrient efficiency improved just as dramatically. By delivering urea and potash directly to the root zone in water-soluble form, the IoT system saved 50 percent of urea and 53 percent of potassium relative to traditional practice, while nitrogen use efficiency rose 106.9 percent and potassium use efficiency rose 118 percent. The gain comes from basic physics and plant physiology: conventional flood irrigation washes nitrogen and potassium away in surface runoff, whereas drip fertigation places the right nutrient at the right place at the right time, maximizing uptake and minimizing loss. Pesticide costs also fell by 53 percent, and labor demand dropped by 33 percent, since irrigation and fertigation ran automatically without field visits.

Economics told a more nuanced story. When all gross costs were counted, including the substantial initial investment in sensors, automation hardware, software, and drip accessories, the IoT system’s benefit-cost ratio was initially lower than traditional farming during the first crop cycle. But measured against variable costs alone, the IoT system was clearly superior, with total variable costs about 18 percent lower than conventional production thanks to savings on labor, irrigation, fertilizer, and pesticides. At an 8.5 percent discount rate, the system’s benefit-cost ratio was 1.17, its internal rate of return exceeded the discount rate, and the researchers project that the initial investment would be recovered after roughly five crop cycles, assuming two cycles per year. A sensitivity analysis confirmed that the system remains profitable even when costs rise or returns fall.

The authors are candid about the obstacles to scaling. IoT sensors are scarce in the local market, import tariffs inflate prices, and repeated sensor calibration adds expense and complexity. For smallholder farmers facing high upfront costs, adoption will be difficult without policy support, and the researchers recommend removing taxes on IoT devices, offering incentives, and conducting public field demonstrations across different locations. They also suggest that Long Range Wide Area Network technology, which transmits over long distances with low power, could overcome connectivity gaps in remote areas lacking Wi-Fi or 4G coverage. The study covered a single season at a single site, so the team recommends multi-season, multi-location trials to confirm scalability. Still, the demonstration stands: a sensor-driven irrigation network, working unattended under South Asian field conditions, delivered eggplant yields on par with intensive conventional practice while saving nearly two-thirds of the water and half the fertilizer, a combination that could reshape how resource-constrained farming systems feed a growing population.

Subject of Research: IoT-enabled sensor-based automated drip irrigation and fertigation for water- and nutrient-efficient eggplant production in Bangladesh

Article Title: Field evaluation of sensor-driven drip irrigation systems for eggplant production

Article References: Sarker, K. K., Karim, N. N., Islam, A. T., Ahmed, I., Uddin, M. N., Hasan, S., Hoque, M. R., Ali, M. T., Kabir, M. S., Biswas, S. K., Hossain, M. A., & Mahboob, M. G. (2026). Field evaluation of sensor-driven drip irrigation systems for eggplant production. BMC Agriculture, 2(1), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s44399-026-00031-3

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s44399-026-00031-3

Keywords: IoT, precision agriculture, drip irrigation, fertigation, eggplant, water use efficiency, nutrient use efficiency, smart farming, Bangladesh, soil moisture sensors, benefit-cost ratio, sustainable agriculture

The research, led by Partheeb Mostafiz, Debolina Debnath and Kazi Md Tanvir Anzum, focuses on fast-moving consumer goods with extremely short shelf lives, using packaged bread as its case study. Bread has a commercial shelf life of just 120 hours, and retail scanner evidence indicates that bakery lines exhibit the highest expiration rates of any perishable category, with more than 8% of perishable units expiring before sale and bakery products frequently exceeding 12%. Distributors of such products face a chronic dilemma: overstocking secures service levels but converts edible product into end-of-life waste, while understocking protects margin at the cost of lost sales and customer defection. The problem is sharpest in the traditional-trade channel that dominates South Asian retail, where neighbourhood outlets typically operate without electronic point-of-sale systems, real-time inventory visibility or formal demand forecasting, so replenishment quantities are set judgementally days before demand is realised.

The team’s answer is a dual-channel clearance mechanism they call the Near-Food Channel, or NFC. At a fixed audit point 72 hours after production, any inventory in excess of an optimised threshold, termed the Protection Level, is physically transferred to a separate discount retailer. Because clearance stock is spatially and commercially insulated from the full-price shelf, it cannot cannibalise fresh sales, the very outcome that has discouraged distributors from adopting markdown pricing in the first place. Existing markdown models typically assume that discounted units remain on the primary shelf, where they erode full-price revenue; the new design removes that penalty by construction rather than by pricing cleverness.

Determining how much inventory to protect required a stochastic mixed-integer non-linear programme, solved in GAMS using sample average approximation over 300 Monte Carlo scenarios, and then validated in a Rockwell Arena 14.0 discrete-event simulation of the full 120-hour product lifecycle. Crucially, the two behavioural parameters that govern the policy were estimated from primary data rather than assumed. A structured survey of 217 traditional-trade bread purchasers in Dhaka yielded a freshness decay penalty of 0.72, fitted by non-linear least squares to a power-decay model of willingness to pay, and a clearance-channel price elasticity of 2.85, obtained by log-log regression of conversion rates on relative price. Both parameters entered the models as normal distributions with a standard deviation of 0.05, so that estimation uncertainty propagated through every scenario and replication rather than being suppressed.

The empirical setting was a high-volume retail node in Jatrabari, Dhaka, comprising 20 neighbourhood outlets served by a single distributor. Daily footfall across the catchment was recorded, tested for normality and represented as a normal distribution with a mean of 1,040 customers and a standard deviation of 30, while individual inter-arrival times within the trading day were generated as exponential variates conditional on the realised daily total. The distributor buys each unit at 40 Bangladeshi taka and sells fresh product at 50 taka, the clearance retailer operates on a 10% margin, and reverse logistics cost 0.5 taka per transferred unit. Under the conventional baseline, the manufacturer grants a 2% wastage allowance that reduces the distributor’s effective unit cost to 39.2 taka, an arrangement the authors describe as an implicit subsidy for waste.

The numerical results are striking. In the conventional single-channel system, the model identifies a sharp waste threshold at 2,126 units, the mean quantity the fresh channel absorbs over the lifecycle: below it the entire order sells, and above it every additional unit ordered is wasted. At the maximum tested stocking level of 3,000 units, the baseline produces 874 wasted loaves, a 29.13% waste rate, and a distributor loss of 11,300 taka, with profit turning negative from 2,750 units onward. Both dual-channel scenarios, one applying a constant 30% markdown throughout the clearance window and the other a stepped 20% on Day 4 followed by a further 10% on Day 5, eliminated physical waste entirely across the full range of stocking levels from 1,700 to 3,000 units.

The financial consequences are equally significant. Under the constant markdown, distributor profit stabilises between roughly 19,400 and 20,900 taka at stocking levels where the conventional structure would have lost money, while the stepped schedule performs better still, delivering 20,346 taka at maximum overstock and generating 17% more gross clearance revenue, 23,210 taka against 19,810 taka. The advantage of the stepped policy stems from simple arithmetic: most clearance volume moves on Day 4 at only a 20% reduction, returning 36.36 taka per unit to the distributor rather than the 31.82 taka recovered at a 30% cut, and the deeper discount applies only to the residual. Total ecosystem value rises from 106,300 taka under the conventional structure to more than 142,000 taka under the stepped policy, with the gains drawn from waste that previously accrued to no one rather than redistributed between parties.

A one-at-a-time sensitivity analysis confirmed that the profitability benefit is robust. Doubling and even quadrupling the reverse-logistics cost, and raising the clearance retailer’s margin from 10% to 20%, left waste mitigation efficiency at 100% and reduced distributor profit by at most 7.7%, a consequence of the fact that the recovered salvage value exceeds the transfer cost by a factor of more than sixty at every markdown depth tested. The binding constraints proved to be demand-side rather than cost-side: a 10% reduction in catchment footfall was the single most damaging perturbation, cutting waste mitigation efficiency to 90%, while a 20% increase in the freshness decay penalty reduced it to 92.3%. Even under the worst perturbation, however, distributor profit remained positive, ranging from 5,483 to 23,973 taka against the conventional baseline loss of 11,300 taka at the same stocking level.

Beyond the numbers, the study carries a broader theoretical claim: waste reduction and profitability are complementary rather than competing objectives once the channel structure is right. Prior simulation-based studies achieved waste reductions of 15 to 30% through single-channel discounting and treated the residual as an irreducible cost of service. The present results suggest that this residual is largely an artefact of channel design, because physically separating clearance stock from full-price stock removes the cannibalisation penalty that bounds markdown policies. The framework also dissolves the distributor’s incentive to under-order: with the payoff function flattened and never turning negative, the ordering rule can shift from a conservative quantile of the demand distribution to a service-driven one, and the manufacturer recovers the full wholesale price of 40 taka per unit, worth approximately 2.92 million taka annually to a producer shipping 10,000 units per day.

The practical appeal of the mechanism lies in its low-tech implementability. Because the Protection Level can be expressed as a lookup table indexed by the initial order quantity, front-line warehouse staff can execute the audit and transfer from a printed schedule, requiring no real-time analytics, connectivity or point-of-sale integration, a decisive consideration in exactly the traditional-trade settings where data-intensive waste-reduction approaches have failed to take hold. The authors argue the framework transfers to packaged dairy, ready-to-eat meals, cut produce and pre-packed protein, subject to re-estimation of the behavioural parameters and adjustment of the audit timing. At policy level, they suggest that wastage allowances written into manufacturer-distributor contracts could be discouraged, and that an explicit regulatory category for near-expiry sale with mandatory date disclosure would reduce the legal uncertainty that currently deters clearance retailing. Given that retail accounts for roughly 13% of the 931 million tonnes of food wasted globally each year, a profitable, subsidy-free intervention of this kind offers emerging economies a low-capital complement to the cold-chain investments that have long dominated food-loss strategy.

Subject of Research: Stochastic dual-channel clearance routing to prevent food waste in perishable FMCG supply chains

Article Title: A stochastic dual-channel clearance strategy for food waste prevention in perishable FMCG supply chains

Article References: Mostafiz, P., Debnath, D., & Anzum, K. M. T. (2026). A stochastic dual-channel clearance strategy for food waste prevention in perishable FMCG supply chains. Cleaner Engineering and Technology, 34, Article 101310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clet.2026.101310

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.clet.2026.101310

Keywords: food waste, perishable supply chains, FMCG, markdown pricing, simulation-optimisation, discrete-event simulation, protection level, clearance channel, reverse logistics, cleaner production, Bangladesh, bakery

Rice is the backbone of food security in Bangladesh, which ranks third in global production behind China and India, with an output of roughly 36 million tons. Farmers there grow rice year-round across three distinct seasons: Aus, a short-duration pre-monsoon crop; Aman, the dominant rain-fed monsoon season; and Boro, the fully irrigated dry season. Together these cycles covered about 11.69 million hectares and produced 38.15 million tons of grain in the 2021-22 season. Such continuous cultivation creates an essentially permanent habitat for arthropods, including the 267 harmful insect species and 375 beneficial arthropod species recorded in Bangladeshi rice ecosystems, of which 20 to 33 pest species are considered economically significant.

The research team, led by Tapon Kumar Roy and colleagues, ran a permanent penicillium-type light trap fitted with a 100-watt tungsten bulb beside the institute’s 15-hectare research fields from January 2019 through December 2024. The trap operated every evening from dusk to dawn, for 10 to 12 hours depending on day length, with no competing light sources within at least 200 meters. Each morning, researchers collected the trapped insects, killed them rapidly in a deep freezer at minus 20 degrees Celsius, and identified them using taxonomic keys, magnifying glasses and a stereo microscope. Because light traps attract only nocturnal, light-seeking insects, minute parasitoids were excluded from the analysis, but the method reliably captures the major moths, planthoppers, leafhoppers and bugs that dominate rice pest pressure, as well as many of their predators.

The diversity analysis told a striking story of dominance. The Shannon-Wiener diversity index for the community came out at 1.040, well below the maximum potential value of 2.565, and Pielou’s evenness index was just 0.406. In plain terms, a small number of species accounted for the overwhelming majority of individuals. The brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens, was the undisputed king, making up nearly 74 percent of all trapped insects. This sap-sucking bug is one of the most destructive rice pests in South and Southeast Asia, capable of causing hopperburn, the sudden wilting and death of entire field patches, and its dominance was amplified by intensive cultivation and heavy nitrogen fertilizer use, both of which favor rapid reproduction. Green leafhopper and stem borers ranked next, though at far lower relative abundances of roughly 7 and 5 percent respectively.

Monthly patterns revealed a clear seasonal rhythm. Stem borer abundance climbed through the monsoon and peaked dramatically in October, when trap catches reached an average of 374 individuals per month, significantly higher than any other month. The brown planthopper followed an even more explosive trajectory: numbers stayed low through the spring and early summer, then surged from August onward, peaking in November at an average of nearly 17,000 individuals, before declining through December. Green leafhopper and zigzag leafhopper also peaked in November, while white-backed planthopper peaked across October and November. Rice bugs showed a bimodal pattern, with high catches in May and June and again in November. The rice leaf folder was present year-round but most abundant from September through December. Taken together, April through July and September through November emerged as the high-risk windows for most pests, coinciding with warm temperatures between roughly 29 and 33 degrees Celsius maximum and 17 to 23 degrees Celsius minimum, and elevated relative humidity.

The seasonal breakdown sharpened the picture further. The Aman monsoon season proved to be the most pest-prone period for nearly every key insect, including stem borer, rice leaf folder, brown planthopper, white-backed planthopper, green leafhopper and zigzag leafhopper. The Aus pre-monsoon season ranked second, and the cooler, drier Boro season carried the lowest pest load, with the notable exception of hopper activity during its transition into the Aus season. The researchers attribute the Aman season’s vulnerability to a convergence of factors: it covers the largest cultivated area, coincides with the monsoon’s high humidity and favorable temperatures, and supports vigorous vegetative growth that provides abundant food and oviposition sites. Heavy rainfall in the Aus season, by contrast, appears to suppress some insect populations directly through mortality and egg wash-off, offsetting that season’s warm temperatures.

Natural enemies followed their own calendar. Carabid beetles were the most consistent predators, present throughout the year with peaks in May and again in October and November, suggesting they establish early and could contribute to preventive biological control. Dragonflies and damselflies peaked from July to September, tracking the humid monsoon months that support the aquatic larval stages of these odonates. The green mirid bug, Cyrtorhinus lividipennis, an important predator of planthopper eggs and nymphs, showed the opposite pattern, peaking in the cooler months from December through February, consistent with its preference for temperatures between 10 and 30 degrees Celsius. Ladybird beetles remained scarce overall but appeared in greatest numbers in October and November, apparently responding to the surge of planthoppers and leafhoppers, a classic density-dependent predator-prey signal.

Correlation analysis against weather variables added mechanistic texture to these patterns. Maximum, minimum and mean temperatures were positively and significantly associated with rice bug, white-backed planthopper and damselfly abundance, and mean temperature correlated positively with stem borer, zigzag leafhopper, rice leaf folder, carabid beetle and ladybird beetle. Rainfall told a more divided story: it favored damselflies, dragonflies, white-backed planthopper and rice bug, but was negatively associated with brown planthopper, green leafhopper, green mirid bug and several beetle predators, reflecting how intense monsoon downpours can kill small insects or disrupt egg-laying. Relative humidity significantly boosted damselfly and dragonfly numbers. Among the predators, ladybird beetles and carabid beetles were positively and significantly associated with most key pests, confirming their value as biological control agents, while staphylinid beetles and green mirid bugs correlated negatively with the pest community, hinting at suppression effects or responses to different microclimatic conditions.

The ecological implications reach well beyond northern Bangladesh. Because insects are poikilothermic, their body temperatures and metabolic rates track the ambient environment, and warming of just 2 degrees Celsius can add one to five extra generations per year for some species, while a 10-degree rise roughly doubles metabolic rate, accelerating feeding, movement and fecundity. Climate change is therefore expected to alter pest phenology, extend activity periods and increase outbreak frequency, potentially elevating minor pests to major status. The study’s identification of specific temperature and humidity windows associated with peak pest abundance gives forecasters concrete thresholds to work with, and the finding that transitional periods between seasons, such as the Boro-to-Aus shift, are sensitive windows for pest buildup adds a new dimension to timing-based management.

The authors are candid about the limitations. The monitoring relied on a single light trap at one location, so the abundance estimates reflect local conditions and may not generalize to other rice-growing regions with different cropping intensities, varieties or landscape structure. Light traps also miss day-active and weakly phototactic species, and no yield or economic injury measurements were collected alongside the insect counts. Still, previous work cited in the study suggests light traps capture roughly 94 percent of the target pest population in a field, making them a strong proxy for monitoring. The team calls for multi-location networks using standardized trapping, combined with direct field sampling and yield assessment, to strengthen regional forecasting models.

For farmers, the practical message is that pest management in Bangladesh’s rice fields should be climate-responsive rather than calendar-driven. Scouting and control efforts should concentrate on the Aman season and the shoulder months when temperatures sit in the 29-to-33-degree range and humidity climbs, while conserving the natural enemies, green mirid bugs, ladybird beetles, carabid beetles, dragonflies and damselflies, that the study shows track and sometimes suppress pest populations. Combined with light traps for early warning, economic-threshold-based insecticide use, and the broader toolkit of integrated pest management, this six-year dataset provides the temporal scaffolding on which a more sustainable, less pesticide-dependent rice protection strategy can be built, at a time when both food security and environmental health depend on getting the timing right.

Subject of Research: Seasonal dynamics of rice insect pests and natural enemies in relation to weather variables in northern Bangladesh

Article Title: Temporal dynamics of rice insect pests and natural enemies in relation to weather variables in northern Bangladesh

Article References: Roy, T. K., Sannal, A., Rana, M. M., Akter, S., Nayeem, A., Tamanna, S., Shultana, R., Hossain, M. M., & Hasan, M. R. (2026). Temporal dynamics of rice insect pests and natural enemies in relation to weather variables in northern Bangladesh. Heliyon, 12(15), Article e45396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45396

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2026.e45396

Keywords: rice, brown planthopper, light trap, integrated pest management, climate, Bangladesh, stem borer, natural enemies, seasonal abundance, temperature, rainfall, agroecosystem

The global context gives the study its urgency. More than 400 million tons of plastic are produced annually worldwide, and at least 14 million tons reach the ocean each year, accounting for roughly 80 percent of all marine debris from the surface down to deep-sea sediments. Projections suggest production could exceed 650 million tons by 2050, more than two hundred times the levels of 1950. Bangladesh has a symbolic place in this story: in 2002 it became the first country in the world to ban plastic shopping bags under the Environment Conservation Act. Yet the ban has remained largely ineffective, undermined by weak enforcement, scarce alternatives, and insufficient public engagement. National material flow analyses show plastic consumption of about 1.7 million tonnes in 2019 to 2020, roughly 10 kilograms per capita, with only around 28 percent recycled, mostly through the informal sector. In Chattogram, the city where CUET is located, an estimated 205 tonnes of plastic waste are generated daily, of which only about a quarter is recycled.

What makes the new research methodologically interesting is its choice of analytical tool. Constellation Analysis, developed for interdisciplinary sustainability research, treats a problem as a network of four element types: social actors, technical elements, symbolic elements such as policies and norms, and natural elements such as materials and environmental resources. Relationships between elements are drawn with a standardized notation that includes directed influences, conflicts, and, crucially, missing linkages, which mark expected but absent relationships and therefore potential intervention points. Unlike the Multi-Level Perspective, which explains sustainability transitions at a macro level through niches, regimes, and landscape pressures, Constellation Analysis maps the concrete actors, technologies, rules, and materials of one bounded setting, making it well suited to locating leverage points on a campus with roughly 6,000 students and 500 faculty members.

The researchers built their map through a deliberately participatory, two-stage process. Between December 2022 and December 2024, four events drew in 310 participants in total. An information session with municipal agencies and regulatory bodies placed campus plastic use in its wider governance context. A knowledge-sharing workshop brought together 195 students, administrators, hall authorities, and canteen coordinators to document consumption patterns and operational constraints. A roundtable of academics, policymakers, media professionals, and recycling experts then critiqued the draft maps, and five in-depth interviews with an administrator, a hall authority, an environmental specialist, a head chef, and a jute industry expert tested technical feasibility. Qualitative data were coded by a four-member team using a consensus-based thematic procedure, with every coding decision adopted only after full agreement, and the evolving maps were documented in an audit trail from preliminary drafts to the final consolidated constellation.

The resulting map identifies six social actors, seven technical elements, fourteen symbolic elements, and six material or environmental elements. Among the actors, students emerge as the primary consumers, highly aware of environmental issues but with limited formal influence over procurement and waste policy, a power asymmetry that constrains their agency despite their central role in daily consumption. Shop owners appear as price-driven gatekeepers whose packaging and sourcing decisions follow cost and availability rather than environmental criteria. Dining staff hold critical practical knowledge about waste handling and material use but are systematically excluded from policy design. Two functions are effectively absent from the system altogether: a plastic-ban enforcement capability, and external funders who could finance infrastructure and alternative procurement beyond the university’s budget constraints.

Two self-reinforcing causal loops lie at the heart of the analysis and explain why plastic dependency persists despite widespread awareness. The first is an economic feedback loop: shop owners stock cheap plastic packaging because suppliers offer it cheaply and customers expect it; habitual use sustains demand, which reinforces low-cost sourcing and keeps higher-priced jute alternatives out of the campus market. The second is an enforcement-gap loop: the single-use plastic ban exists on paper but lacks a monitoring relationship and a designated supervisory authority, so non-compliance normalizes continued plastic use, which in turn weakens the ban’s perceived credibility and reduces institutional pressure to resource its enforcement. Because both loops intersect at the shop-owner node, the authors argue that a monitored shop-level ban combined with affordable alternative sourcing could disrupt both simultaneously.

The material side of the constellation is equally revealing. Jute, Bangladesh’s celebrated natural fiber, is the leading candidate to replace single-use plastics, offering biodegradability, low production emissions, and end-of-life options such as composting. Yet stakeholders documented real technical constraints: jute’s moisture sensitivity, described as a leakage problem that limits its use for liquids, and the tendency of jute and paper products to degrade when wet, alongside production costs that exceed those of plastic. One expert participant was unequivocal, saying that if plastic use is to be reduced, an alternative must be provided, and nothing, in their view, could be better than jute. Others called for innovation so that jute could be widely used as a packaging material. Administrators acknowledged the gap between symbolic and operational commitments, noting that while authorities emphasize awareness-raising, they face financial limits on subsidizing jute products and instead encourage local vendors to find affordable biodegradable options.

Quantitative observations from a parallel baseline assessment lend field-based support to the mapped barriers. Campus-wide waste generation, including residential and canteen streams, was on the order of 1.18 kilograms per capita per day, with plastics making up an estimated 8 to 15 percent of the stream and organic matter dominating at roughly 84 percent, a composition consistent with the residential profile of developing-country campuses. A two-stream wet-dry segregation pilot in student halls showed that the infrastructure identified as the system’s missing element is operationally achievable: dedicated wet-waste bins captured organic material almost entirely free of contamination, whereas mixed fractions sharply reduced recyclable value. This corroborates the study’s central claim that source segregation is a critical leverage point.

From the validated map, the team derives four systemic drivers and matching leverage points. Institutional-technical misalignment, in which policies support plastic reduction symbolically but lack integration with procurement, infrastructure, and enforcement, calls for strengthened monitoring with explicit supervisory authority and systematic compliance verification. Economic-environmental value conflicts, where cost minimization overrides environmental considerations across all stakeholder groups, call for procurement reform embedding sustainability criteria alongside incentives. Performance and accessibility gaps in alternatives call for technical capacity building, including performance specifications, separate dumping stations, and proposed plastic-to-jute exchange booths. Fragmented stakeholder coordination calls for frameworks that link students, dining staff, administrators, shop owners, and funders under assigned administrative ownership. Experts suggested pragmatic sequencing, building awareness through campaigns while running enforcement drives that begin without penalties and move step by step toward sanctions, supported by tools such as compliance monitoring and a dedicated regulatory body for the issue.

To make progress measurable, the study proposes a set of candidate indicators for future monitoring, including plastic waste generated per capita, the percentage of campus outlets complying with the single-use plastic ban, the share of waste correctly segregated at source, the proportion of procurement allocated to reusable or biodegradable products, the cost per use of jute bags, and the frequency of audits by the responsible authority. These are prospective measures rather than empirical baselines, since the study is explicitly diagnostic in scope. The authors acknowledge limitations: the single-campus design supports analytical rather than statistical generalization, and future work should extend the constellation boundary to municipal operators and off-campus vendors, integrate quantitative material flow analysis, and pilot the two stakeholder-derived interventions, the shop-level ban and the exchange booth, with baseline and follow-up mapping. Still, the broader message travels well beyond one campus. In a country where pioneering policies routinely falter at the implementation stage, the study reframes plastic dependency not as a behavioral deficit but as an addressable systemic configuration, and it offers the Global South a transferable method for turning symbolic commitments into monitored, operational sustainability.

Subject of Research: Socio-technical mapping of single-use plastic dependency and reduction pathways at a Bangladeshi university campus

Article Title: Status quo mapping for sustainable plastic waste reduction and management: A constellation approach in a university setting of Bangladesh

Article References: Rahman, M., Biastoch, G., Zuthi, M., Khan, F., Hasan, S., & Kraft, E. (2026). Status quo mapping for sustainable plastic waste reduction and management: A constellation approach in a university setting of Bangladesh. Environmental and Sustainability Indicators, 32, Article 101520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indic.2026.101520

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1016/j.indic.2026.101520

Keywords: plastic pollution, Constellation Analysis, Bangladesh, university campus, single-use plastics, jute alternatives, waste management, sustainability indicators, enforcement gap, procurement reform, source segregation, Global South

The research team, led by Md. Imam Sohel Hossain of the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, mapped the flood extent using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from the Sentinel-1 satellite, processed on the Google Earth Engine cloud computing platform. Unlike optical sensors, radar penetrates monsoon cloud cover and works day and night, making it the tool of choice for flood detection in a region where persistent storm clouds routinely block conventional satellite photographs. The team compared pre-flood images from August 1 to 18 with post-flood images from August 20 to September 1, 2024, and used only the VH polarization channel, which is particularly sensitive to smooth standing water and to double-bounce scattering from flooded vegetation.

The method relied on a bi-temporal change-detection ratio. Radar backscatter values were converted from decibels to linear power, and a pixel-wise ratio image was computed by dividing the post-flood backscatter by the pre-flood value. This ratio approach corrects for scene-wide radiometric differences and seasonal changes in surface conditions. To identify flooded pixels automatically, the researchers applied Otsu’s algorithm, a classic image-segmentation technique that selects the threshold maximizing the variance between flooded and non-flooded classes in a 255-bin histogram. The computed threshold of 1.039 classified pixels where post-flood backscatter had dropped dramatically relative to the pre-flood baseline, since calm water acts as a near-specular reflector that bounces radar energy away from the satellite.

Validation was rigorous. One hundred stratified random validation points, fifty per class and generated with a fixed random seed for full reproducibility, were compared against independent visual interpretation of three-meter PlanetScope imagery acquired during the flood period, supplemented by gauge-measured water levels and field records. The resulting map achieved 94.0 percent overall accuracy, a Kappa coefficient of 0.88, and an F1 score of 0.94 for the flooded class, with errors evenly balanced between false positives and false negatives. Because the user’s accuracies of both classes were symmetric, an area-weighted accuracy estimator returned the same 94.0 percent, confirming that the map faithfully represented the true distribution of inundation rather than merely an artifact of the validation design.

The radar evidence itself was corroborated by striking backscatter statistics. Across the study area, the mean VV backscatter fell from −8.655 decibels to −9.79 decibels after the flood, while VH fell from −16.162 to −17.817 decibels, both signatures of smoother, water-covered surfaces replacing vegetated or rough land. The timing of the radar-detected inundation matched river records closely: the Gumti-Burinadi gauging station at Cumilla recorded its monthly maximum water level of 12.57 meters above mean sea level on August 23, up from a July maximum of 9.21 meters, while the Selonia station on the Little Feni River peaked at 5.92 meters on August 25, far above its July maximum of 3.42 meters.

What caused such an extraordinary event in a region whose last major flood occurred in 1988? The hydro-meteorological evidence points primarily to extreme rainfall over the upstream Tripura catchment in neighboring India, where rainfall exceeded 430 millimeters in a short period during the flood-generating window. Cumulative rainfall during August 19 to 24 reached approximately 4,226 millimeters in the Tripura catchment, dwarfing local totals of roughly 1,355 millimeters in Cumilla, 534 millimeters in Feni, and 1,289 millimeters in Noakhali. Pearson correlation analysis revealed a strong positive association, around 0.82, between cumulative rainfall and district inundation extent, and the peak water level in the Gumti River coincided almost exactly with the period of maximum flooding detected from orbit.

The flood was therefore not primarily a product of local rain. Runoff from the transboundary Gumti and Little Feni catchments surged into low-lying Bangladeshi floodplains already saturated by months of monsoon rainfall, which had reduced infiltration capacity and accelerated surface runoff. Media attention focused heavily on possible releases from the Dumbur Dam in Tripura, but the researchers are careful on this point: without access to verified reservoir operation records or dam release hydrographs, the dam’s contribution remains a plausible but hydrologically unverified factor. They likewise decline to attribute the event directly to climate change, noting that formal attribution would require long-term hydroclimatic analysis, though climate change remains an important context for intensifying extreme monsoon precipitation.

The spatial pattern of damage was far from uniform. Cumilla, sitting squarely in the Gumti River floodplain with extensive low-lying agricultural land, bore the brunt: 55.3 percent of its area, or 1,694.3 square kilometers, was inundated, 62.5 percent of its cropland was damaged, 52.5 percent of its settlements were affected, and 13.4 percent of its population, some 699,839 people, were exposed. Feni saw 31.6 percent of its area flooded, affecting 35.3 percent of its cropland and about 116,946 residents, while Noakhali recorded 24.6 percent inundation with roughly 159,325 people exposed. Cumulatively, 53.05 percent of cropland and 52.75 percent of settlements across the three districts were hit, figures that underline how severely agriculture dominated the loss profile, in contrast to northeastern Bangladesh’s haor floods, where displacement and prolonged wetland inundation dominate.

Beyond the numbers, the study highlights a subtler danger: the risk created by the absence of floods. The authors argue that three decades of quiet conditions eroded community preparedness and risk perception, a phenomenon they link to the concept of hazard memory loss documented in long-interval flood zones elsewhere, such as the Paris region. Worse, recent urbanization in southeastern Bangladesh has ignored the region’s latent susceptibility, with new development spreading across paleo-channels and low-lying basins near silted rivers and inadequate drainage. The prolonged two-week waterlogging that followed the rapid onset reflected the flat floodplain’s limited drainage capacity rather than continuous rainfall, and unplanned growth, river sedimentation, and encroached drainage channels likely amplified both the extent and the persistence of the flooding.

The authors propose a two-track response. In the short term, they emphasize rapid relief and rescue, emergency food and water distribution, restoration of transport and power infrastructure, and deployment of mobile health units to prevent disease outbreaks. Over the long term, they call for regular dredging of the silted Gumti, Feni, and Meghna rivers, modern urban drainage systems, restoration of wetlands as natural flood buffers, community-based early warning systems that blend digital platforms with local knowledge, and flood-resilient construction such as elevated housing and reinforced embankments. At the policy level, they advocate Integrated Water Resource Management and stronger transboundary cooperation with India through the Joint Rivers Commission, including real-time sharing of rainfall, flow, and dam discharge data. Pointing to international models such as the Netherlands’ Room for the River program, China’s Sponge City initiative, and nature-based solutions adopted across Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the team argues that Bangladesh could combine satellite-based monitoring, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, and ecosystem restoration to confront a risk landscape in which, as this flood proved, low exposure no longer means low risk.

Subject of Research: Rapid satellite-based assessment of the August 2024 flash flood impacts on population and croplands in southeastern Bangladesh

Article Title: Flash floods in traditionally less flood prone areas of southeastern Bangladesh

Article References: Hossain, M. I. S., Mostafa, M. G., Rana, M. S., & Hossain, M. S. (2026). Flash floods in traditionally less flood prone areas of southeastern Bangladesh. Discover Geoscience, 4(1), Article 375. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44288-026-00752-7

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44288-026-00752-7

Keywords: flash flood, Bangladesh, Sentinel-1 SAR, Google Earth Engine, flood mapping, Cumilla, Feni, Noakhali, Tripura rainfall, cropland damage, disaster risk management, flood exposure